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THE LIBRARY 

OF 

THE UNIVERSITY 
OF CALIFORNIA 

LOS ANGELES 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS 
ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED 

LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. 
TORONTO 



MY SOUTH SEA 
SWEETHEART 



BY 

BEATRICE GRIMSHAW 

Author of "The Terrible Island" 



jeto gotfe 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1921 

All rights reserved 



COPYRIGHT, 1921, 
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1921. 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 



CHAPTER I 

"TVT ARRIAGES '" said my father ' " would n 

-L* A the whole be quite as successful as they are 
if they were arranged by the Lord Chancellor with- 
out reference to the will of the parties." 

" That's not your own," said old Ivory, throwing 
a piece of driftwood on the fire. The log, sea- 
salted, snapped into flames of vivid green and blue. 

" Of course not," replied my father. "I don't 
even remember who said it. But it's true." 

" It may be," said old Ivory caustically, " but if 
the Lord Chancellor only managed to be ' quite as 
successful ' as existing arrangements are, I wouldn't 
give much for his chance of a long life." 

" Perhaps you and I are a trifle prejudiced," of- 
fered my father. The smoke rose up in a steady 
stream to the dark roof of the cave. There was an 
opening there, invisible by day. 

" We've had some cause. . . . Son and grandson 
in my case; your father's and your well, well! 
for you." 

I saw he had bitten off what he was going to 
say. I knew what it was, of course. Mother and 
father hadn't got on. Mother was dead in the dark 
ages, before I remembered. Father and I and Lor- 
raine my aunt had come to Hiliwa Dara Island with 
old Mr. Ivory and his great-grandson, Luke. I 
didn't know when, and didn't know why. They 



1909581 



2 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

owned the island among them. Nobody else lived 
there but a score or two of native laborers whom 
we had brought with us. Nobody ever came. Once 
or twice a year our cutter went away, and came back 
again with goods from another island. There were 
many other islands in the world; there was one, very, 
very big, that was called Australia, whence I had 
come, I did not know when or how. I could not 
remember it. I could not remember anything but 
what I knew the island and my father and aunt, 
old Ivory and his boy, the laborers, the gardens, the 
great cave house where we lived. These were my 
world ringed round by the pathless sea. 

" Luke's parents' marriage had its good points," 
said my father consideringly. 

Luke, at this, raised his head from the arrow he 
was shaping by the firelight. (We always used a 
driftwood fire by night, since the main hall of the 
cave was never warm.) I saw his blue eyes glitter 
under their heavily carved brow arches. Boy 
though he was, he had a masculine face, in nothing 
at all like the small, pointed countenance, with the 
dark eyes and delicate forehead, that met me every 
morning in my glass. 

" Certainly Mark was fond of the boy's mother," 
said the old, old man in the corner of the cave. 
" She spent his fortune and more. But we won't 
discuss her before the boy." 

Luke looked up again, and then down at his work 
once more. His lips were set rather tightly. I 
thought he had been near speaking, but he uttered 
no word. In the pause that followed, the sea, a 
long way outside, talked on the coral beach; a puff 
of wind, blown down the entrance tunnel, set the 
driftwood to leaping and blazing. 

Lorraine, her hands round her knees, sat staring at 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 3 

the light. Her eyes, green as the flames, her hair, 
black as charred ashes, seemed to relate her in 
some strange way to those wild fires of our far-off 
island. I could not have put the thought into words 
then. I can now. Child as I was, I knew her to 
be the flame under ashes. I had the wisdom that 
those older than I had not. 

It was she who spoke next. I was sitting with 
my bare, sunburned legs stretched out under my 
blue tunic, staring at her, and wondering if she was 
not very, very old. She must be very aged, I 
thought thirty at the least. Or maybe sixty. 
Perhaps it was her black clothing made her look 
old. My father and Ivory wore light khaki clothes, 
Luke and I had blue tunics very much alike, but Lor- 
raine went always dressed in loose, thin robes of 
black. No one, I knew, had seen her in any other 
color, since the wedding day that had left her a 
widow before she was a wire, in the world I had 
never seen, long ago. 

She said, looking at the green of the fire : 

" I grant you that most marriages are unhappy, 
love matches as often as the rest. But the happy 
marriage is a Paradise that's worth taking any risk 
for. Any risk ! " Her voice died down, as the 
flames were dying. The wind that whipped them 
into life had blown itself away. 

Old Ivory settled himself more comfortably on 
the wrack-filled cushion of his seat. 

" It's just that looking for Paradise that does the 
mischief," he said. " I'm too old to deny that you 
see the Paradise business once in a way oh, in 
a very long way indeed! But it's a million to one 
sort of chance at the best. As for it's being worth 
any risk, that's poppycock. And the usual love 
match isn't a risk at all, it's a practical certainty 



4 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

of the wrong kind. Marriage is the great danger 
of life. Nature has to make us drunk to drive us 
into it. When I think of all the fine men I've seen 
spoiled " He looked at his great-grandson. I 
thought he checked a sigh. 

" And all the fine women made miserable by 
brutes," added father. His eyes were on me as he 
spoke. 

" How typical you are of your ages ! " commented 
Lorraine. " Mr. Ivory all for the man, as they 
used to be; Arthur more for the women, as people 
are now." 

"What are you for, Lorraine?" I asked curi- 
ously. 

" The children," she said, with more sadness in 
her tone than I could believe altogether natural 
there is such a temptation in having a golden voice ! 
" We three are wrecks of one sort and another, but 
you two are boats still in harbor. You'll have to 
face the gales some day." 

For it was understood that I, and Luke, were 
going to school going to see the world in a 
very few years. 

" I shall just love to face the gales," I said. 

" They won't be wanting," answered Lorraine. 

" Now what do you mean by that? " asked father, 
alert to any tone of disparagement directed towards 
me. 

For answer, my aunt took my small face in her 
hands, and silently turned it up to father's view. 
I do not know what he saw in it, to make him 
look so long. A strange light dawned in his 
eyes. 

" Yes, Lorraine," he said, as she released me. 
" You're right; she is." And he drew a long, long 
sigh. 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 5 

" Well," he said presently, " so much the wiser 
I think myself." 

" / think," spoke Lorraine, " that there's never 
any use in trying to play chess with Fate." 

" Poppycock ! " exploded old Ivory again. 

It was clear to me by this time and I think to 
Luke also, though he did not look from his arrow 

that our elders were talking secrets of some kind. 
Curiosity began to burn me. But, with the cunning 
of childhood, I kept all expression out of my face, 
in the hope of hearing more. 

" Luke," spoke old Ivory from his throne, " go 
to bed." 

The boy rose instantly, and put his knife and his 
arrow on a shelf. 

" Good night, Miss Hamilton," he said. " Good 
night, Dara. Good night, grandfather. Good 
night, Mr. Hamilton." 

He walked off down the dark corridor at the 
far end of the cave without a backward glance. 

" Hamilton," said old Ivory, " you spoil her." 

" Ivory," countered father, in his pleasant voice 

I have never heard sweeter tones than father's 
and Lorraine's " you're too hard with him, some- 
times." 

" If I am, it's in your interests. Yours. I wish 
you considered mine as carefully." 

u I don't think they're neglected. And there's 
five years or so to look round in, at the very least." 

" Luke's like our family," observed Ivory, with 
what appeared to be an abrupt change of subject. 
" A mighty good fourteen. Mark was ready for 
college at sixteen, I remember, if they would have 
taken him so early. I was preaching at eighteen. 
As for Matthew my son he was precocious 
enough in other ways. He'd raise the devil in the 



6 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

village, before he was seventeen, with well, I 
hope Luke won't follow the rule of a skip-a-genera- 
tion. Rather skip two, and model after me. But 
he's an Ivory, all right. We start soon, and keep 
going along, if you don't kill us." 

I could not make anything interesting out of all 
this, but so convinced was I that there was some- 
thing interesting in it, if one could only track it 
out, that I feigned sleep, and lay with my face buried 
in my long hair, on the comfortable fire-warmed sand 
beside my father. I knew he liked to have me thus 
sleeping near him, and I hoped to gain an unob- 
served half hour. 

But I had reckoned without Lorraine. 

" Get up," she said, in a low, penetrating whisper; 
" don't sham, or I'll tell your father." 

At this (though I could cheerfully have slapped 
her) I thought fit to awake by slow degrees, 
stretch, yawn, and rise to my feet. I knew she 
would carry out her threat if I persisted, and my 
father was not to be trifled with, on any question of 
lying or trickery. 

So I bade them good night in proper order 
father first, then Lorraine, then old Mr. Ivory 
and went off to my room, leaving them sitting there 
round the great driftwood fire, with the smoke 
springing up into the dark arch of the roof, and the 
sea sounding on outside. 

When I look back, across the seas and the years, 
to those island days, I think always of the long sound 
of waves, the fresh, weedy smell of sands at low 
water, the silver shining of a full tide after rain. I 
can see, on a still afternoon, the oyster gray of the 
sky meet the oyster gray of the sea, with just so 
much division as might mark the hinge of a giant 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 7 

shell. I can see, on northwest mornings, the wide 
lagoon lie smooth and green as emerald, silver-set in 
the ring of white tumbling surf that barred it away 
from the blue thunderous seas outside. . . . Sea, 
always sea the sounds, the sights, the scents of the 
great South Seas these were my picture books, my 
library, my school. . . . We had books and pictures 
of the common kind in plenty, and I got plenty of 
schooling, too, from my father and Lorraine. But 
I think it was the sea that taught and made me, 
most of all. 

My room was at the end of a long cave passage, 
some way from the main hall. It was by no means 
the damp, rough cell that the nature of our dwelling 
might have led one to expect. Father and old Ivory, 
on our coming to the island, had chosen to leave the 
main hall just as it was, sand-floored, limestone- 
roofed, with rough arches leading away in all direc- 
tions, and a low, wide tunnel running out towards 
the beach and the sea. But the rest of the place 
was fitted up almost with luxury. 

Have you not thought, when you were a boy, and 
spent long summer holidays wandering through the 
sea-scented, echoing halls of some little city of caves, 
how you could, if only you might, make a splendid 
residence of such a place, given time and labor and 
the delightful possibility that never, never came 
about? You never even dared to speak to your 
elders of such a dream. You knew how they would 
laugh, and tell you it was impossible. . . . 

Well, let me tell you now that it is not. Many 
men have made such homes, in many parts of the 
world. Father and old Ivory were not blazing the 
trail of inventors when they turned the caves of 
Hiliwa Dara into a house good to look at, and very 



8 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

fit to live in. They had heard of such things, and 
seen them, so they knew how to go about it. They 
made coral concrete by the ton, burning masses of 
white coral down on the shore into heaps of flour- 
like lime; mixing it with sand and gravel, puddling 
it with water. They concreted the floors of the 
caves meant for living rooms, and the floors of the 
passageways. They stopped the cracks through 
which water trickled. They blasted openings to the 
outer air, and put shutters in them to keep out rains 
and tempests. They made, in fine, a sound, tight, 
airy, beautiful house out of the dark and muddy caves 
of Hiliwa Dara, and they did it in a fourth of the 
time that would have been needed to build any other 
kind of house. Our cave ancestors even yet can 
teach us a thing or two worth learning. 

I carried a brand from the fire with me to my 
room, and lit with it the lamp that hung from the 
roof a great " baler " shell, cream-lined, crimson- 
lipped, filled with cocoanut oil, and floating a wick 
of cotton. We had kerosene, matches, and most 
other civilized necessities, in store. But since com- 
munication was always uncertain, it was the invio- 
lable rule of Hiliwa Dara to use native material as 
much as possible. And I do not think more beauti- 
ful pure light ever fell from a more beautifully 
shaped vessel than fell upon my little drift-timber 
bed, and on the cedar chest that held my clothes, 
and on the gleaming frieze of pearl shell set about 
the roof of the room, from the lamp made in the 
depths of the great sea. 

On my mattress of dried sea wrack I slept well. 
But all through the night, and all through the long 
sounding of the sea that penetrated even to the 
depths of my sheltered little chamber, ran through 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 9 

my dreams the echo of the words I had heard in the 
great hall: " There are five years to look round 
in " " You are right; she is." And in my dreams, 
I wondered What was I that I did not know? 
After the five years, what should come to me? 



CHAPTER II 

AS soon as there was light to tell gray sea from 
gray sand, Luke and I were out upon the 
beach. We always began the day with a swim, and 
as we were dressed practically alike, in a loose 
short smock and knickers of blue linen, there was 
not much undressing to do. Luke threw off his 
smock, I kept mine on, and we both changed after- 
wards. 

The routine of the bath was always the same. 
We ran out of our cave rooms, met in the main hall, 
and raced together down the slope of clinking coral 
that led to the lagoon. We shrieked and leaped 
as we ran, because it was very cold in the gray of 
the morning, and the night had been hot, and our 
bodies were aching for the kiss of the green salt sea. 
There was a shallow space to run through first of 
all, kicking up the water as we went, and throwing 
aside great carven shells that a collector would have 
knelt to save. Then came the deep, with gold chain- 
work of sunrise already knitting over and over it, 
and dazzling us as we lifted our heads from the 
ripples we had made in our lemming-like rush for 
the full sea. Then the outer coral reef, sharp and 
spear-pointed, not to be mounted without care. . . . 
There was always the temptation to stand on its 
farther edge and look and long for the tumbling 
white and blue waves outside, where we were for- 
bidden to go. Luke had caught a thrashing or two 
from old Ivory, and I had been shut up in my cave 
for a day, more than once, before we had given in 

10 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 11 

to the hard law. I don't know that we should have 
done so, even then for it was so invigorating to 
breast those huge breakers, and ride, shouting, in a 
chariot of foam, over the reef into the lagoon 
had not an ugly thing frightened me one morning. 
We were used to the sight of shark fins riving 
through the deep, and like most Pacific folk, had 
little fear of them (indeed the shark is not so black 
as he is painted), but what we saw that day was 
different. It was just a flash in the sun, a whipping 
up of something long and black, and very thin 
more like a thirty-foot length of rope than anything 
else, except for the oily glitter. It wasn't an octo- 
pus feeler; that is thick. It wasn't the whip-like, 
dagger-armed tail of a giant stingaree ; we knew the 
look and the lash of that, as well as we knew the 
look of its brown-marbled fin, big as a dining table, 
heaving up into sight and sinking again before you 
had time to take a real look. I do not know what 
it was I never did; and no naturalist has been 
able to tell me. But one of the great gulfs of the 
Pacific, a chasm five miles deep, lies near the outer 
reef of Hiliwa Dara Islands, and the devil of the 
deep seas alone knows what horrors may be hidden 
there. . . . 

I never wanted to swim " outside " again. Luke 
not only wanted to, but did it, not a minute after we 
had seen the awful thing, while I stood staggering 
about in the midst of the foam and thunder of the 
reef, sick at heart, and crying to him to come back. 
He did come back, a little pale, but with a wonder- 
ful light in his blue eyes. 

" Grandfather can lick me if he likes now," was 
his only remark, shouted through the pounding surf. 
" I've proved it to myself." 

By the freemasonry that lived between us two, I 



12 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

knew that he meant he had proved his courage. I 
knew that he had doubted it; I knew that Luke, 
made as he was, could not have endured that doubt, 
and endured to live. 

Running up to the great hall of the cave house, 
all wet, with my mermaid hair streaming down, I 
had shown my courage then by fearlessly bearding 
the formidable Ivory, and telling him why Luke had, 
once more, broken his rule. I could not endure my 
boy mate should suffer punishment for such a noble 
fault. 

Ivory heard me in silence, and then told Lorraine 
to take me to dry myself. I don't know what he 
said to Luke. Luke only told me that " grandad 
was very decent to him."* He did not go beyond 
the reef again. For myself, not all the treasures of 
all the world poured out at my feet would have 
tempted me to venture. I might break sensible 
rules through childish bravado, but I was never the 
boy-girl type that courts an actual danger. As for 
Luke's horror of " being afraid " I saw it, and ad- 
mired it, but I did not understand it. 

In truth, I felt then, as I felt on the morning 
when we rushed down into the lagoon, that Luke 
was somehow or other getting away from me. He 
was changing. How, I did not know. But it 
seemed to me that Luke and I were somehow 
no longer one. We had been used to speak with- 
out thinking, to talk as we breathed, to understand 
without talking. Now . . . 

It came back right in the middle of our swim, as 
we landed together on a coral " horsehead " to rest 
after a vigorous bout of the misnamed " crawl." I 
was examining a grazed elbow with some attention, 
when I looked up, and saw Luke's eyes fixed on my 
face. 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 13 

" Don't look at me like that," I snapped. 

"Like what?" 

" Don't look at me as if you as if you saw 
me!" 

" You talk a great deal of nonsense," he said 
calmly. 

" There's more sense in it than in some of your 
sense," I retorted (more wisely than I knew) and 
immediately did a sitting dive. 

But I had been right. Luke was changed. 

That very morning he amazed the household, al- 
ready collected for prayers in the main hall, by 
walking in clad only in a bathing towel, and drop- 
ping the entire collection of his tunics and knickers 
at his grandfather's feet. > 

"What's the meaning of this conduct?" de- 
manded old Ivory, looking, with the Bible in his 
hand, quite frightfully like an ancient Hebrew law- 
giver. I do not mean that there was any Jewish an- 
cestry about the Ivorys. I only mean that old Ivory 
was amazingly Michael-Angeloesque, in moments 
of any stress. 

" Grandfather," replied Luke, with a courage 
that turned me cold, " you have dressed me like a 
girl or a child long enough. I want clothes like 
yours and Mr. Hamilton's. Proper clothes." 

" Do you know how old you are ? " demanded 
the prophet with the Book, in a windy voice. 

" Of course. I'm fourteen and two weeks." 

" And you want a set of grown-up clothes." 

" Yes, sir." There was no " please " attached. 
I trembled. I thought old Ivory would crush him 
with the mighty Book. 

Ivory put down the Bible without a word, went, 
still without a word, to my father's room, and re- 
turned with a shirt and trousers belonging to him. 



H MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

" I'll square with you, Hamilton," he said briefly. 
" Let Lorraine take up the legs of these a bit. 
Mine are too big altogether." 

Lorraine did take up the legs, after prayers. 
During prayers, Luke, holding firmly on to his point, 
sat and knelt, draped in the bath towel only. I 
whispered to him that he was just like the infant 
Samuel, and had the satisfaction of seeing a vexed 
flash in his eyes. It was pleasant, I thought, to 
make him feel. I would try it again in some other 
way. Making people feel was sport except with 
Lorraine. 

..." Be with us all for evermore. Hamil- 
ton!" 

'What is it?" 

" If Dara had heard, or joined in, a single word 
of the prayers, I am very much mistaken." 

"Is this accusation true?" asked father, pulling 
me to him, and pinching my ear. 

Ivory looked at him, and at me, disapprovingly. 

" Train up a child . . ." he said. " I suppose 
breakfast's ready." 

" There's fried flying fish. And honeycake," I 
said, jumping up and down, and clapping my hands. 
" I love them both." 

" You should never say you ' love ' things," chid 
Lorraine, sweeping on in her black dress. 

" But I do," I said. " I love everything in all 
the world sometimes. Things to eat, and things 
to see, and things to feel, things to ... I wouldn't 
care to live if I couldn't go on loving." 

" Dara, Dara ! " said my father, half reproach- 
fully, half sadly. But he did not check me; he 
never checked my childish running-on. 

;< When I go to the world," I said, scampering in 
front of him (we always called the projected exodus 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 15 

of Luke and of myself " going to the world " 
I don't know why) " it will be delightful, for there 
will be new things to love there." 

" True, for you," said my father, somewhat sar- 
castically. No one else took any notice at all. We 
were entering the dining hall now, and the smell of 
the good things on the table seemed to occupy all 
thoughts. . . . 

I must tell about our dining hall. It was the 
glory of Hiliwa Dara, and would have been the 
wonder of all that part of the Pacific, had tourists 
ever come within five miles of it. But no one ever 
did; and so its beauties were ours and ours alone. 

Nowadays, when famous caves are becoming 
common, and when thousands of people every year 
go through the Mammoth Caves of Kentucky, the 
Jenolan Caves of New South Wales, and other show 
places, one need not fear to be accused of " travel- 
ers' tales " if one describes an underground miracle. 
And a miracle inded was the Hall of Persephone, 
as my scholarly father had named it. I used 
to think, in my earliest days, that it was the very 
palace hall to which Demeter's daughter had been 
rapt away, in the arms of enamored Pluto. And I 
thought, too, privately, that Persephone had been a 
" fuss-cat " for objecting to Pluto or anything else, 
so long as she had that magnificent home to live in. 

It was a hall of diamonds. 

I believe, in geology, such things are known as 
" drusy cavities " a singularly ugly name for a 
singularly beautiful thing. I did not know even so 
much in those days, nor, I think, did my father. 
We were quite content to be ignorant of the scientific 
titles rightly owned by Persephone's Hall and its 
crystals. I called them diamonds, because they 
were exactly like the small shiny stones in Lor- 



16 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

raine's half-hoop ring, but even I knew that you 
didn't have diamonds the size of a dinner plate. 

The hall was about forty feet long by twenty to 
twenty-five in width. You came into it from a long, 
dark passage, designedly left unlighted, that led you 
with almost startling suddenness into a blaze of 
crystalline splendor like nothing else in the heavens 
above, or the earth beneath, or the waters under the 
earth. Father and Ivory, with much blasting and 
digging away, had contrived one immense oblong 
window, open towards the rising of the sun. Its em- 
brasure must have been full ten feet deep, but it 
let in a splendor of sun, in the early morning hours, 
that burned and dazzled upon the thick-set crystal 
masses lining roof and walls, till one could scarcely 
bear the glory of it. The drooping chandeliers, 
set by Nature's hand alone; the glassy curtain that 
fell like a frozen waterfall down all one end of the 
hall; the curious tall " candlesticks " beside the win- 
dow, shone not crystal-white alone, but violet, blue 
and green and red, in sparks, as the light crept down 
the walls from the great opening to the sea. Blue 
and white the waves were racing, out there, with a 
glory of sun and spray on them that almost matched 
the glory of the crystal hall within; and the sea 
wind streamed through the embrasure, strong and 
salt and vivid on his lips, a very philter of life. . . . 

Once I heard old Ivory say to himself, as the 
wind met him at the mouth, he walking slowly, as 
his manner was, with his head bent a little towards 
his breast: 

" I remember, when I think 
That my youth was half divine "... 

I wondered what he meant. Then it occurred to 
me that old people, of course, were foolish; they 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 17 

said things that had no meaning at all. It was well 
to be of a different species and race it was well 
to be young. . . . 

This morning I felt and behaved very young in- 
deed I think, as an unconscious protest against 
the suddenly acquired age of Luke. I came into 
Persephone's Hall with a series of frog-like leaps 
my latest accomplishment, of which I was inordi- 
nately proud and found my way to my own side 
of the table, hopping. 

" Honeycakes and flying fish! " I sang, taking my 
seat. 

Lorraine told me I was a citizen of Sybaris, and 
when I shook my head at her, said I had better look 
it up at lessons. But not even the thought of les- 
sons could spoil that glorious day. 

Dinah would have spoiled it, if any one could. 
She had cooked the breakfast in her kitchen cave, 
set it out on the concrete table, and was now sitting 
humbly, as was her habit, at the far end, though 
father had told her often enough, in my recollec- 
tion, that she was not considered a servant here on 
Hiliwa Dara, where all were equal, and that he 
would just as soon she sat with us. 

I saw, the moment I looked at her, that she was 
in a funeral mood. 

Dinah had missed her vocation, if any one ever 
did. Obviously she should, with her peculiar cast 
of mind, have been the wife of some flourishing 
undertaker, to whom she would have been as good 
as a fortune. As a matter of fact, she had, out " in 
the world," been married to a commercial traveler 
of the wine and spirits line, who died of extreme 
conviviality and, I think, of Dinah. But that is 
conjecture. 

She was the most ghoulishly minded human being 



i8 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

I have ever met, with an inly rooted attraction to- 
wards illnesses, deaths, and funerals. We had had 
few deaths on Hiliwa Dara, but there had been one 
or two. A native from among our field laborers 
had died of consumption; a young brown girl had 
" gone out " in her confinement; a baby or two had 
given in to baby ailments. Dinah made the most of 
all such occurrences; it would be unkind to say that 
they actually gave her joy, but they certainly did 
seem in some obscure fashion to liven her and do 
her good. Her bedroom was hung round with fu- 
neral pictures; her father's grave, her mother's 
grave, a faded funeral wreath in a frame ; a ghastly 
photograph of her husband lying in his coffin, an- 
other of his headstone, with herself in widow's 
weeds beside it. She had newspaper notices of all 
these events pasted into a book, as actresses paste 
their photographs of praise. She did not wear wid- 
ow's weeds herself; it was Lorraine, who never 
spoke of deaths, who wore eternal black for one 
dead but Dinah, although she dressed in the 
rough blue affected by myself and Luke, contrived 
to shed an atmosphere of widowhood over the very 
cookies and pies that she made, and to spread a 
smell of funeral baked meats about every ham she 
cured. 

To-day, after helping round the excellent results 
of her cookery, she heaved a deep sigh and re- 
marked, with her head on one side (always a dan- 
ger signal) that she did not hold with tables made 
that way. Asked (injudiciously) to explain, she 
said that a marvel table (concrete was always " mar- 
vel " to Dinah) made her think of the tomb. And 
it seemed unlucky, somehow, to be eating your food 
off of a grave. Dinah did not read or at least, 
so little as hardly to be worth mentioning but 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 19 

she certainly used different founts of type in her talk, 
and her capitals were expressive in a high degree. 

Father never did know when to let well alone 
with Dinah. I think his inborn courtesy often 
prompted him to unnecessary and injudicious polite- 
ness. 

"Why so?" he remarked, slicing a honeycake. 
" I don't see that any bad luck is likely to hit us now, 
if it hasn't done so in all the years that we have 
been eating off this concrete table of ours." 

" Man proposes, and God decomposes," said 
Dinah piously. There were tears somewhere in 
her voice. She filled a cup of coffee, and buried her 
face in it. Luke suddenly choked in his. He could 
never get accustomed to Dinah's amazing malapro- 
pisms. 

" I can't help smelling bad luck, somehow or 
other. It seems that kind of a day," observed 
Dinah, looking, unmoved, at the world of sapphire 
and gold that showed through the great window. 

" And Master Luke there " (she would keep up 
the master and the miss) " sitting with the ser- 
mons of the grave about him, as you might say, does 
give my stomach a turn." Luke, as a fact, was still 
wrapped in his bath towel like a senator in a toga, 
or, as Dinah cheerfully put it, like a corpse in its 
cerements. 

Nobody took much notice of her. Dinah was 
like that sometimes. She may, or may not, have 
been quite right in her mind. I have often won- 
dered. But she was a splendid worker, and without 
her efficient aid in household tasks, my education at 
the hands of Lorraine would have been sadly ham- 
pered. So every one indulged her. 

" Talking of bad luck is bringing it," said my 
father, quite seriously. He believed in the fructify- 



20 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

ing power of thought; it has become a common 
faith, since those days. . . . 

Dinah rolled on unreproved. Her head was on 
one side; she was buttering a piece of bread in a 
resigned sort of manner, as if she were sorry for it, 
and for herself. . . . 

" You can't bring bad luck nor keep it away," she 
said. " You can only make ready for it. Thank 
God, I always have kept the best of my night- 
dresses not trespassed upon, folded up with moth- 
balls inside of it in a box, so that I can face my 
Maker with a mind at rest. And if ever anything 
happens to me " she addressed Lorraine now, 
eating her bread-and-butter and dropping tears on 
it without the slightest alteration in her voice 
" there's my will put away in the biggest tea tin 
that we don't use. I'd like you to remember it. It 
always did seem a scandal to me for any one to die 
intestine." 

There was no handling Dinah when she got into 
this state. 

Luke and I bolted our food, and fled. We 
coaxed Lorraine to run the ends of Luke's new 
trousers through her machine, and then, as it was 
Saturday, and a holiday, went off together to climb 
Parnassus, and look for ships. Ships never came 
or almost never but none the less, we looked 
as industriously as if we had been wrecked sailors 
marooned out here on Hiliwa Dara, hoping for 
release. 

Father had called the hill in the middle of the 
island Parnassus, because he was a poet, and used to 
go up there and write when he happened to have the 
time. I think, with the knowledge of later days, I 
can reconstruct much of the frame of mind that led 
him to settle on Hiliwa Dara. He was, as I have 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 21 

said, a poet ; not a very famous one, but still not un- 
known. He had as much of the poetic tempera- 
ment as many whose names are greater, but he 
had, I imagine, more feeling than power of expres- 
sion. Thereby hung the tragedy of his marriage. 
He had married a girl who believed in nothing that 
she didn't see, credited the existence of nothing that 
was not told to her in plainest of words. And 
father couldn't tell her the things that she ought to 
have known, without any necessity for telling. And 
somebody else, in time, proved apt at telling that 
which she never should have known. . . . 

My little mother " played the game." If she 
had not, I, her daughter, would scarcely tell this tale. 
She loved the man of the silver tongue (I have won- 
dered, words or no words, if he could ever have had 
a voice as silver as my father's was). She even 
told him so. She told my father. She would have 
told all the world. Her love, she said, was her 
glory. ... I don't know what she thought it was 
to her husband. I suppose she did not think about 
that at all. 

The man waited. Probably he thought not 
understanding my little mother, even as she had not 
understood my rather that he had only to wait. 

I was born my father's own child. When I 
was three days old, she laid me in his arms, and 
asked him to take me away from the room she 
wanted a good long sleep. Even the nurse was to 
go away. 

They all went. They stayed within hearing, but 
no one heard a sound. . . . An hour later, my 
mother's body was found floating at the foot of the 
cliffs. They called it childbirth mania. I do not 
know or perhaps, I think I do. . . . 

The man? He went to " the war." You will 



22 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

not want to know which war it was. He never came 
back. 

After that, when the shadows had cleared away a 
little, my father being, as I have said, a poet 
dreamed a dream. It was the dream that every- 
body has, at some period of his or her life the 
dream of an island of one's own. I need not tell 
you about it; you have had it too. But you never 
hoped to realize it, and never tried. I don't think 
my father would have tried either being so much 
of a poet if he had not about this time met old 
Ivory. Mr. Ivory was a retired missionary, who 
had spent many years in the Pacific. Father, in his 
Sydney home the beautiful little nest he had built 
for the bird that only wanted to fly free talked 
with the strange old man, and found that he, too, had 
suffered. His marriage had been unhappy. His 
sons had been unhappy. His grandsons had been 
more or less unhappy. All were still living, save 
the grandson, who had died in a shipwreck with his 
wife, leaving one little baby boy, whom Ivory had 
adopted. 

He told my father these things, and I infer that 
they found each other very congenial on the subject 
of unhappy marriages. I thought in my childish 
days, and I think still more now, that the Ivorys, 
on the whole, were a violent-willed, impetuous crowd 
who made too early and too hurried choices. Their 
very virtues, which were as fierce as everything else 
connected with them, probably contributed to this re- 
sult. But Ivory did not think so. He thought the 
institution of marriage itself was to blame. He was 
not, and is not, alone in his error. 

He told my father much about islands and island 
life; told him, incidentally, that islands were purchas- 
able things, and that a man who wanted one, and 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 23 

could afford to pay for his fancy, might have one as 
readily as he might have a horse or a house. It 
turned out, when inquiry was made, that few were at 
that time in the market. Hiliwa Dara being some 
miles square, of good soil, well watered, and unin- 
habited, naturally was valued high by the govern- 
ment to which it belonged. My father could not 
raise capital enough to buy it, and to live there as 
well. And yet his very soul, by now, was set on 
owning it. 

Here old Ivory came to the rescue. He had 
saved money himself, and he had a curious plan in 
which my father, and no one else, could help him. 
He proposed a partnership. Lorraine, my aunt, at 
that time a widowed bride (for her fiance had died 
in a railway accident on the morning of their mar- 
riage day) , came as companion to father and future 
instructress to me. And father, who had neglected 
my christening hitherto, much to the horror of old 
Ivory, when he found it out, had me named " Dara " 
after the island. And Hiliwa Dara was bought, 
and the poet realized his dream. 

If you had seen Hiliwa Dara, you would have en- 
vied him; it was, in every way, the island of a 
dream. . . . 

Many Pacific islands are nothing of the kind. 
The " low " island, lovely though it is, is no one's 
dream. People do not know enough about it to 
dream of it although its coloring, as a rule, is 
superb, unmatchable, its palm trees the best of all 
island palms. Hiliwa Dara was not one of these. 
It was " high " island, with just the tall purple peak 
standing up in the middle, the drooping veils of 
stream and cataract, the bright green climbing 
woods, and lawny bays, and the white, white coral 
shore that you have pictured so often to yourself. 



24 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

It had palms in plenty what is a South Sea 
island without its palms? leaning over the green, 
still water of the lagoon within the reef, pluming 
the slopes of " Parnassus," standing out on the ends 
of seaward-running points, as palms do stand, just 
as if they had been planted there for sheer beauty. 
We planted a good many ourselves after coming to 
the island, but no one would have noticed them, 
since they were all set out on a rather ugly but con- 
venient flat away at the back of the island. 

Yes, it was lovely, very, very lovely. It lay in the 
central belt of the Pacific, where hurricanes never 
come, and there is so little difference between the 
seasons that one may well call life one long, un- 
ending summer. . . . There were rainy days, of 
course, sometimes day after day of rain for quite a 
good while; there were equinoctial gales of a kind; 
there were " cold " nights when the thermometer 
went down to sixty-nine, and everybody said that 
the climate must be changing, and nothing had ever 
been seen like it. There were hot days, plenty, 
when the instruments in our little thatched hut stood 
well over ninety at high noon, but there was never 
cold nor tempest, nor destroying heat; always there 
was a core of life and coolness in the air from the 
breath of the great seas; almost always there was 
sun, and flowers that marked two summers in the 
year with a double gift of bloom. Our fruits, too, 
came twice a year, not once, as in less generous 
climes. There were two seasons, marked by the 
changing of the winds from sluggish, sometimes 
stormy northwest, to the cool, clear river of the 
flowing southeast " trades " that ran for nearly 
seven months of the year without a break, through 
our high pale blue heavens. Some of our flowers 
kept no season, but bloomed endlessly. Always 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 25 

there were secretive orchid blooms hiding in the 
great bush flower-butterflies and moths of white 
and pink and yellow, of orange spotted with brown, 
of flesh-red tipped with color of new blood. Al- 
ways the faithful frangipanrii bore white, bold-cen- 
tered stars, sometimes many, ^sometimes few, that 
loaded every breeze with floating honey, and the 
hibiscus burned red at the edges of the bush, and 
the paw-paw hung out waving streams of green- 
white blossoms, almost too cloyingly sweet. The 
orange trees that stood about the cave house were 
young, but they flowered most of the time, and 
fruited twice yearly, so that the stabbing scent of 
orange bloom blown down the entrance archway 
was never absent from our rooms and the golden 
fruit was almost always piled upon our tables. Sea- 
son melted into season on Hiliwa Dara, with not so 
much change as comes of morning melting into after- 
noon. It was always lovely, it was always sum- 
mer. And it was always peace. 

Until the day when Dinah said there was ill luck 
about. 

It would be absurd to say that Luke and I did not 
feel it, when we started on our climb of Parnassus, 
that splendid Saturday morning. Children are as 
sensitive as sea anemones to currents and move- 
ments of the minds about them. We had both felt 
that change was afoot, and Dinah's remarks had 
only underlined our own convictions. First it had 
been the odd, uncomradely way in which Luke had 
looked at me. Then it had been the demanding, 
and the giving of his " toga virilis " a change that 
made him almost a stranger to me. Also, and un- 
derneath everything, running through and influenc- 
ing everything, had been the thought of the mysteri- 
ous talk of our elders rountj the fire last night. Of 



26 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

course I had told Luke every word of it ; I told him 
everything. But to my surprise, he had talked al- 
most like old Ivory or Lorraine. He had told me 
that I oughtn't to have listened which I knew as 
well as he; only I did not expect to hear it from 
him and that, having listened, I must put it out of 
my mind at once. That, of course, made me think 
or it twice as much as before. And I was greatly 
mistaken knowing him as I did if he was not 
thinking about it too. He might be trying not to; 
knowing Luke's ferocious sense of honor, I thought 
that probable enough. But I did not believe for a 
moment that he was succeeding. 

Unspoken, the mystery was with us both as we 
climbed that morning, bending low, with down- 
hung hands, upon the steep track that wound up- 
wards towards the crest of the hill. There was a 
smell of rich unseen flowers somewhere or other, 
and a whiff like damp incense ; that was forest gums 
and an odor of ferny places, and under all, like 
a deep bass note underlying a high melody, the 
wholesome smell of dirt clean dirt, black squelchy 
dirt that buried our naked feet; that felt warm and 
pleasant, and somehow inexplicably good. . . . 

" Why does one go back to the house? " I panted, 
as we stopped, and flung ourselves on a bit of clear 
grass for a rest. 

" Nobody knows," answered Luke promptly, tak- 
ing up my thought. " I've read lots about that. 
People never do want to go back to their houses, 
and they love the other things, and keep escaping 
to them. But something always sends them back. 
The books say so. But they don't say what." 

" I shall know when I go to the world," I ex- 
claimed proudly. " I shall know everything about 
everything, then." 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 27 

Luke did not answer, but chewed grass, looking 
at me. It struck me then, for the first time in my 
life, that he was a very handsome creature. I did 
not put it in that way; I only thought to myself that 
the light, bright blue of his eyes, and the width and 
depth of the brows that arched them over, and the 
straight lines of his cheeks so unlike the apple- 
shaping of my own were good things to look at, 
like the sea and the sunrise sky, and the rain when 
it fell in strong, shining lines upon the shore. . . . 

I did not tell my playmate these things. It may 
have been because of that strange new raiment of 
his, that seemed to alter him and set him apart from 
me ; but I think on the whole it was because of noth- 
ing more nor less than girlish modesty. That is a 
bloom that springs, sown or unsown, in the breast of 
every woman-child. I have never believed those 
tales of beautiful shameless maidens brought up 
alone on coral shores. A girl's modesty is as much 
a part of her as her eyelashes or her hair. Lor- 
raine had never taught me anything save my ordi- 
nary schoolroom lessons; but I knew, as well as if 
she had lectured me twice daily on behavior to the 
opposite sex, that you did not tell a boy he was hand- 
some at least not such a boy as Luke had sud- 
denly become. I would have told him once last 
year last night when? I could not remember. 
I only knew that things, somehow, somewhen, had 
changed, and were not as they once had been. And, 
though I had no guide but the ancestral memories 
that slumber, almost unfelt, in every breast, I knew, 
very surely, that things would never be quite as they 
had been again. 

Oh, yes, the world was changing on Hiliwa 
Dara. 

" Hup ! " said Luke suddenly, gaining his feet in 



28 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

a single spring, and pulling me up immediately after. 
I was quite rested, but I would have rather he had 
left me a little longer; because I was just working 
my way to an idea that he knew, or guessed some- 
thing about that strange conversation in the outer 
hall that I did not know. Something in his expres- 
sion in the way he looked at me, consideringly, 
as if he were thinking over matters that concerned 
me, but wouldn't tell me what they were had 
suggested the thought; and with it had come the in- 
stant desire to make him tell me. 

And then he must needs insist on hurrying on 
as if we had not a good half day before us. 

" He guessed, I suppose," was my resentful 
thought. " I hate him when he guesses. . . . Just 
wait; I'll make you tell me by and by." 

But now we were come to the peak of high Par- 
nassus, where the way was so steep that you could 
have turned at any point and sat down on the path 
as on a chair; and even our youthful lungs were 
taxed a bit. We climbed in silence, scrambling like 
ponies over the stones, until the last turn of the track 
was reached, and the fierce assault of the south- 
easter from which we had been shielded struck us 
full in the face. 

"Oh, glory!" I cried, standing, with arms out- 
spread, to drink it in. " I love, I love, I love the 
wind. I would rather kiss it than father. I love 
the grass oh, one must love the grass when it 
stands up tall and. dances in the wind like that ! 
Luke, Luke, listen to the betel nuts, hear what 
they're saying to the wind." 

On Parnassus' peak there are betel nuts, the most 
wonderful to my mind of all the wonderful 
palm family. I used to feel shaken with wild pas- 
sion of admiration when I stood underneath one, 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 29 

and saw its slim white column, no thicker than my 
own slim neck, trembling but not yielding to the 
touch of the strong trade wind, and its crest of green- 
fluted fans sparkling and ruffling against the blue of 
the high-up skies, seventy feet above. 

" The betel nut's a princess," I sang. " An en- 
chanted princess, sorrowful and proud. I could 
make a poem about her. The palm's a wood nymph 
who loves a man of the sea. Look at them below 
us, rushing down the slopes and bending over the 
lagoon ; their bodies are white, and they curve like a 
diver. . . ." 

"Look out, Sappho; don't you dive," warned 
Luke, clutching the tail of my short tunic, as I leaned 
over to look down. We learned the same lessons, 
so that I followed his allusion. 

" Sappho," I said, with some dignity, " was a 
poetess, but I daresay I shall be one, but you should 
not call me her, because she had dark hair, and wore 
violets, and I have chestnut hair, father says, and 
there are no violets here. Besides, Sappho was not 
quite nice; Lorraine says so. I shall be a poetess, 
and I wouldn't mind jumping over the Leucadian 
cliff just as she did, if I was very unhappy, but I al- 
ways mean to be quite nice." 

Luke looked at me with that new, odd look of 
his. I have said that our lessons were alike, but 
there were a good many books in the big library 
room that he was allowed to read, while I was put 
on honor not to touch them. Now and then I was 
conscious of reserves and superiorities on his part, 
that I jealously ascribed to those shelves. 

" I should certainly hope so," was all he said; but 
there was a stress on the " I " that puzzled me. 

" It's not your business any more than any one 
else's," I remarked, with a chilling air. 



30 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

" Isn't it? " asked Luke, without the shadow of a 
smile. . 

" Certainly not. Why should it be ? " 

"Why, indeed?" No he was not smiling. 
What made me think he had been? 

It is probable I should have asked since I tol- 
erated no locked doors, at that time of my life 
had not something amazing happened at the mo- 
ment. It was true that we had come up to the top 
of Parnassus to look for ships; we always did, on 
holiday mornings, and we conscientiously scanned 
the empty horizon round and round for them al- 
most always. Sometimes we forgot. This was one 
of the times. We had not looked at anything but 
the betel nuts and palms since the southeast trade 
had greeted us with its hearty embrace. . . . And 
there, just as I opened my mouth to say something 
very cutting and dignified to Luke who really did 
want taking down that morning round the point 
of a palmy cape came the distant, unmistakable, 
white-pinioned figure of a ship ! 

She was several miles away, right at the far end 
of Hiliwa Dara, and had been hidden until that 
moment by the loom of the promontory. But un- 
doubtedly, if we had been up a little sooner, and 
looked out a little more carefully, we could have 
seen her making for the island. This Saturday, of 
all the many Saturdays in the year, we had been 
caught napping. It was our ambition almost our 
duty, we felt to announce the sight of any possible 
sail to the older and (naturally) stupider inhabi- 
tants of Hiliwa Dara. And to-day they must have 
seen her before we did I 

We raised a shriek of " Sail-OI " that reached to 
the sweet-potato fields below, and set all the Niue 
boys and their wives screaming in their turn. Then, 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 31 

hand in hand, we galloped down the track at a rate 
that would have led to broken necks if we had not 
been young, reckless, and barefooted. We took the 
downward slopes in bounds of twenty feet. We 
fell and got up again. We reached the cave house, 
breathless, shouting, and half wild. For the com- 
ing of a ship was no small event at any time, on our 
island, and none had been expected about this time. 
Twice in the year an auxiliary schooner called to de- 
liver goods and take away a cargo of copra. Once 
or twice it had happene'd that our own cutter had 
had to run down to the nearest island group, a week 
or two away. But stray calls, unconsidered ships 
coming in on indefinite business, were things not 
known to Hiliwa Dara. 

We found home in an unusual state of hurry and 
confusion. Dinah, with a large apron on, was walk- 
ing from store to kitchen, and kitchen to dining hall, 
weeping Heaven knows why; I am sure she did 
not herself. Nevertheless, she was very efficiently 
preparing for extra mouths at dinner. 

Old Mr. Ivory had gone down to the copra house, 
and with shouts and waving of arms was hurrying 
the boys in their work of collecting and bagging the 
shell-white sections of cocoanut that had been dry- 
ing on the trays in the sun. Lorraine, tall and wil- 
lowy in her black dress, was standing outside the 
cave entrance, a telescope held to her eye. There 
was more than a bit of wind blowing, but she stood 
as steady as a sea captain, watching the ship come 
round the point. 

It is in the small things that character is read. If 
I had held the telescope, I should have seen nothing 
but a swinging ball of blue. I never could to 
this day I cannot hold a telescope unsupported 
and look calmly at anything that interests me. It 



32 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

takes such a light unsteadiness of the hand to send 
the view flying all over the horizon even the 
quick, hard beat of one's heart will shake the tele- 
scope too much for clear visioning. 

But nothing save death had ever come between 
Lorraine and anything she cared to have or do. 
There was a wonderful force of concentration in 
her slim body. 

She lowered the telescope presently, and an- 
nounced to father: 

" It's not the Anna, or the Pearl. It's a brigan- 
tine with a long name that I can't quite read yet." 
She put the glass up again. " Queen Queen 
Oh, Queen of the Islands" 

" By Gad," said father, looking interested, " that's 
Harry England's boat; I wonder what's bringing 
him here." 

" Shall I run up to the point and shout out the 
course, sir? " asked Luke. His eyes were glowing 
with excitement. 

" No need," said my father. " If that's Harry 
England, he could steer his ship to heaven or to 
hell over a razor edge in the middle of the night. 
See, he's conning her from the crosstrees. Take 
the glass, Dara; I'll hold it for you." 

He steadied it over his arm, while I found the 
ship, and with difficulty focussed the small black 
figure that was swinging between heaven and earth. 
I held it only for an instant, but our telescope was 
a Zeiss of the finest, and in that instant I had a flash- 
ing glimpse of a tall figure leaning out with one arm 
round a backstay, in the untellably graceful attitude 
of the sailor conning his ship, and of a face 
brown, hawky, fiercely concentrated; a face that 
swung high between heaven and earth, and looked 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 33 

out and far, as men look only when alone. ... It 
seemed almost as if I had pried. . . . 

I dropped the glass, and felt I had come back 
from somewhere a long, long way. 

So, first, I saw Harry England. 

" Go and change your dress, Dara; you are very 
dirty," said Lorraine's sweet flowing voice. I wan- 
dered off to my cave bedroom, passing Dinah on the 
way. She had stopped weeping now, but she car- 
ried her head very much on one side, and sighed a 
good deal. She had a large hot pie in her hands; 
it smelt extremely good. Dinah broke a piece off 
the edge as she went, and swallowed it with a ju- 
dicial air. 

" No matter who or what he is," she said, with 
the accent of recent tears still in her voice, " that 
pie's worthy of him, if he's worthy of it." She con- 
trived I really do not know how to give her 
last remark the air of a religious saying. 

" What else is there? " I asked with interest. 

" Never you mind," said Dinah darkly, " I don't 
want none of you about the dining room, Miss Dara, 
feathering your pockets with the best of everything 
while my back's turned." 

" I suppose that's one of your portmanteau words 
for feathering one's nest and filling one's pockets," 
I offered scornfully, being hurt by the (entirely just) 
accusation. 

" You go and clean yourself, miss," was her an- 
swer, " I can't stop here, with the stew just simper- 
ing in the pot." 

I went. I dressed myself in my only " good " 
dress a changeable blue-and-green silk from 
China, that father had bought from a passing ship 



34 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

because it was the color of the sea in sunshine, and 
because I loved the sea. I tied a fillet of the same 
bright stuff through my long red-brown hair, and 
hung about my neck my only ornament a large 
crystal from the Hall of Persephone, slung to a thin 
gold chain. It may seem trivial to record these 
things. It is not. Much of my whole life's fu- 
ture, as it lay before me then, was to turn on just so 
slight a hinge as the dress and the ornaments I 
wore. . . . 

Occupied before my mirror, I missed what I 
should have liked to see the heaving to of the 
schooner, the stowing of her sails, the landing of 
her captain on our little mangrove jetty. By the 
time I came rustling into the big cave hall, exceed- 
ingly pleased with my own magnificence, the whole 
thing was over, and father was walking up from the 
sea beach, side by side with our new guest. 

Shyness, especially in those island days, was no 
fault of mine. I ran to meet them, leaving Lor- 
raine, in her trailing black, expectant at the entrance 
of the cave. I remember how my emerald-blue silks 
tossed and shimmered in the sun as I ran, and how 
my hair, caught by a following breeze, flowed about 
me in one great wave of copper, so that I had to part 
it with my hands, and hold it back, to see father and 
Captain England, when I had come up to them. 

Harry England ! Harry England ! Even now, 
after all that has passed, now, with my copper hair 
enameled with silver, and the heavy, heavy little 
band on my third finger growing flat and worn, your 
name still clings to me. Oh, whoever she may love 
or marry, there is never but one man in a woman's 
life whose name can sing that nightingale note to 
her. 

Think you, Mrs. Herbert Smith, Mrs. Arthur 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 35 

Leighs, Mrs. Briggs, Lady Campbells, Lady Wil- 
liam Stranges, and the rest you are married so 
long that you cannot remember you were ever sin- 
gle; you have sons and daughters who are all the 
world to you; you are fond of your husbands, and 
proud of them. . . . But are those names that you 
have seen on your cards for so many, many years 
the names that sang to you once in the dawn of life 
once, and never again? There may be a woman 
in a thousand nay, I know there will be who 
can answer " yes." But of the rest. . . . Well, 
Herbert and Arthur and William are good men, and 
you are glad you married them; I know you are. 
Let it rest at that. Men know very little after 
all the ages of marriage concerning the women 
they marry. We had just as soon they did not know 
more. You wives whose wedding rings are grow- 
ing thin may fill in the blanks between my lines for 
yourselves. 

I have flown far forward. Back I must fly again, 
over the years and the seas of time, to the beach of 
Hiliwa Dara, and to my father and Harry Eng- 
land walking in the sun. 

When I had ended the struggle with my hair, 
by clubbing a great knot in it and flinging it over my 
shoulder, I greeted the visitor with outstretched 
hand. 

" I am so glad to see you," I told him. 

"Why are you glad, Miss Dara?" asked the 
captain, looking down on me from his near six feet 
of height, without a vestige of the patronizing 
smile or condescending manner that so many elders 
put on when speaking to children. I noted that he 
knew my name ; I supposed he must know everything 
in the world. I was sure he must know the answer 
to his question before he asked it 



36 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

" Because captains are such brave people," I told 
him, " and because father says you will sail your 
ship through hell in the middle of the night over a 
razor's edge." 

Father said nothing at all, as I launched this ex- 
plosive. I had known he wouldn't. He was not 
like the ordinary parent, in many things; certainly 
his sense of justice, which always forbade him to 
blame me for quoting any of his sayings, was 
abnormal. 

Harry England looked at me a little curiously, but 
I thought that he was not displeased. He did not 
make any direct reply. 



CHAPTER III 

WE entered beneath the archway of the great 
central hall. Outside, the heat, at this mid- 
hour of morning, was terrific, but the moment one 
came under the dim, cool vault of the roof, it was a 
different climate. Ivory and my father, I think, 
did well to leave this refuge from the heat un- 
touched by walling or concrete. Through innumer- 
able cracks and passages blew always a fresh wind; 
the white sand floor was cold almost as snow under- 
foot. Captain England seemed to like the place; 
he stopped short near the doorway, and swung a 
rapid, brilliant glance about him. 

" This is good," he said, taking off his peaked 
officer's cap to let the cave winds play in his hair. 
Lorraine moved forward; father presented him to 
her. I saw him add her up and set down the total 
in his mind, even while he was shaking hands with 
her, island fashion. I thought the total was not 
small; yet there was no smile in his eyes when he 
looked at her, even though his lips were smiling. 

" Dinner is just ready," said Lorraine. " Will 
you come into the dining room? " 

" I never dine," said the captain, with a sudden 
flash of brilliant teeth (yes, he was really smiling 
now, eyes and mouth together) , " I breakfast and 
sup." 

"What's that for?" asked father curiously. 

" It's the secret of long life. I intend to live 
long," was England's reply. 

"Have you been reading Luigi Cornaro?" 

37 



38 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

' Yes. And others. The book of human nature 
above all. It is true, Mr. Hamilton. But people 
love their ease." 

I thought he did not look as if he loved ease over- 
much, with his long, lean figure and vivid bird eyes. 
I thought he looked as if he would come to see his 
hundredth year, and live every moment of the hun- 
dred. . . . 

" I wonder," said father thoughtfully, " if I 
tried it?" . . . 

Captain England looked at him with an expres- 
sion which I could not understand then, though 
shortly I was to comprehend it all too well. 

" I don't think you should," was all he said. 
" And I don't think you would find it make any 
difference." 

Father said nothing in reply. His face, seen in 
the glaring light that rushed in from the archway, 
showed for the moment lines that I had never no- 
ticed before. Now I saw them. I saw, too, that 
the skin below his eyes was blue. 

" Father, you read too much," I cried. " You 
are always reading." 

" Sometimes I write," he said, with a comical 
twist to his mouth. I think none knew better than 
he that his work was " writ in water." 

" Where is your workshop? May I camp there 
while you are at dinner?" asked the captain. It 
seemed almost as if he wished to change the conver- 
sation. 

Father opened the cedar door, tight fitted to the 
wall of the cave, that gave entrance to his study. 
The wide, white-concreted room was lit by a lamp 
that burned brightly at all hours of the day and 
night. It was no fanciful shell ornament like mine, 
but a good circular wick hanging lamp from Sydney. 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 39 

Close to the lamp was a long couch covered with 
kapok-stuffed cushions. Books and books and books 
again lined the walls, till one would have thought 
the room was built of them, as a house is built of 
bricks. The floor was covered with pandanus mats, 
plaited in red and brown. 

England swept that fiery glance of his about the 
room, seeming to take in all it contained in an in- 
stant. He stepped for a moment into the hall, and 
returned carrying in his fingers, as though it were a 
feather, a big straight chair. 

" This will do me," he said, swung it under the 
lamp, picked a volume from the shelves, and, with 
a courteous bow to Lorraine, and myself, and a 
" Pardon me," sat down. He was buried in the 
book before we had left the room. 

" He doesn't like to be comfortable, father, does 
he? " I asked as we entered the Hall of Persephone, 
where Dinah, bare arms folded above snow-clean 
apron, stood at the end of the table with the air of 
a priestess conducting sacrifice. Luke was awaiting 
us. Mr. Ivory had not yet come in. 

" Never discuss a guest," exhorted Lorraine, 
sweeping ahead. 

" I didn't mean anything rude," I excused myself. 
" I was only thinking that he seemed like those 
monks in some of your books, who didn't eat good 
things, and wouldn't have nice beds, or " 

" I do not think the resemblance is very close," 
said my father, with a certain dryness. " Besides, 
my dear, Lorraine is quite right. We'll drop the 
subject." 

" Anyhow," I said cheerfully, " there'll be all the 
more pie for the rest of us. I am sure, when he 
eats, it's like the man in Gilbert and Sullivan's play- 
book ' We seldom eat, but WHEN WE DO ! ' " 



40 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

" Dara ! " said my father sharply. I filled my 
mouth, so that perforce I was silent, and winked cov- 
ertly at Luke. Despite his new-found manliness, 
he returned the wink. We were at one in our love 
of pie, a love that, I think, only children and Amer- 
icans can fully understand. . . . 

Dinah, with good cause this day for her inevi- 
table tears, did not exhibit them, after all. You 
never could calculate on Dinah. 

" No one would be a cook who could go and chop 
stones on the road," was her contribution, as she 
served the food. " Here have I been standing in 
the kitchen all morning, till my legs is full of haricot 
veins, and for all my reward, they don't come to 
dinner till the pie is gettin' heavy and the tea has 
been standin' that long that it's full nicotine and de- 
stroyin' the coats of their stomachs. But I don't 
look for my reward below. There's Those Above 
that lets not a pie fall to the ground, nor a cup of 
tea which any one might allow is better for the 
insides than a cup of cold water nor lets a cup 
of tea pass without reckonin' it up against the Last 
Great Day. Miss Dara, I never give you a bit of 
the flaky crust off of the edges; pass me your plate, 
Mr. Hamilton; if you knew anything of the feel- 
ings of a cook, you wouldn't mess good food about 
and never eat it." 

" I have no appetite," said my father. He leaned 
back in his chair, and looked absently at his plate. 
" I am thirsty," he said. He drank his cup of tea, 
and took another. 

" Dad's scored two for you, Dinah," I said wick- 
edly. No one laughed. Lorraine seemed to be 
watching my father. 

" I shall " said my father, rising from the 
table. 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 41 

Then it happened. 

He stopped in his speech, staggered, and fell 
across the table, smashing and spilling plates, 
glasses, dishes of food. His arms struck wildly 
about him, his feet, white canvas shod, rose kick- 
ing in the air. He flung himself, in a terrible con- 
vulsion, right over on his back, and I could see that 
his face was blue, and his mouth open. 

" Oh, Lord God of Israel! " cried Dinah. Lor- 
raine flew to his side, Luke ran to meet her, and be- 
tween them, without a word, they lifted him off the 
table and laid him on the floor. The fearful strug- 
glings were over; his eyes had closed, and he lay as 
if dead. 

" Get him to his room with me," commanded my 
aunt. "Dinah!" 

Dinah, as the strongest, came to her side. She 
was perfectly dry-eyed, and, now, quite self-pos- 
sessed. 

" It's some sort of heart fit," she said, and they 
carried him out. No one looked at me or thought 
of me. I stood in my own place at the table, where 
I had sprung to my feet on the moment of my fath- 
er's fall. I felt as if some one had struck me vio- 
lently, driving all breath from my lungs. Perseph- 
one's Hall had suddenly taken on the look of 
something unknown and strange; I stared at the 
spangling crystals, and wondered what they were. 
. . . What I had seen could not be true. Father 
my father could not have fallen before my eyes, in 
the midst of our laughing talk, struck down like a 
stunned bullock fatally struck. . . . For even in 
the midst of the blind confusion and bewilderment 
of this earliest tryst with Sorrow, my mind, subcon- 
sciously worked on, had told me that the blow was 
unto death. 



42 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

I did not know I knew it. I cried out like a little 
animal in my pain, and shrieked, " Oh, father, don't 
be ill ! " I snatched at Luke as he went to leave 
the hall, and held him in a frantic grasp. " What's 
the matter? " I asked, and screamed again before he 
could answer. I was half mad at the moment. In 
truth, a fit of " angina pectoris " for that was the 
ugly thing that sprang, tiger-like, upon the peace and 
happiness of our lives is no sight for the eyes of 
a child. 

I shall never forget Luke's goodness. He 
quieted me like the mother I had never known. He 
held me, and stroked my hair. Lorraine would 
have scolded, and told me to command myself. 
She hated people who " let go." I do not know 
whether Luke liked letting go any better than she 
did, but he liked me. 

" Dara," he said gently, " you mustn't make a 
noise, to injure your father. I don't know what 
it is, but I'm sure he ought to be quiet." 

" I'll go to him," I cried, struggling. For now 
the paralysis of mind had passed, and I desired ac- 
tion furiously. 

" No, dear," soothed Luke, though his own face 
was white with alarm. " Lorraine will send for you 
if you are wanted. Leave him with Dinah and her. 
You would cry and upset things." 

" Let me just go and listen listen at the door," 
I sobbed, " I'll promise to be so quiet." 

Lorraine would have held her point. Luke gave 
way, though he knew himself in the right. He went 
with me to the door of father's room. It opened 
off the central hall, next to the study, where we had 
left Captain England. Captain England ! His call 
had been the event of the whole year, one little ten 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 43 

minutes past. Now it was less than naught, or so 
I felt. 

But Harry England never counted for naught in 
any scene where Fate might place him. We found 
him, as we came up to the door, just coming out. 
He closed the door behind him carefully, took not 
the least notice of Luke or of myself, and proceeded, 
with a kind of swift deliberation, to drop off his coat, 
and knot a great silk handkerchief he took from one 
pocket round his curiously slim, tough waist. Then 
he put down his head a little, and ran out through 
the entrance of the cave. We stared, amazed. 
We had never seen any one run like that. In the 
blazing sunshine, his white-clad figure was almost 
invisible; you could not tell where it touched the 
earth you could scarcely see when or how it dis- 
appeared round the corner leading to the jetty 
you could only tell that it vanished quite impossibly 
soon. . . . Why, we knew that it took ten minutes 
to walk there ! 

"Where has he gone?" I breathed. 

" To his ship," was Luke's answer. " He wants 
to get something." 

" She's fast to the jetty," I said. " He won't be 
very " 

44 There he is ! " exclaimed Luke, in a hushed tone 
of excitement. 44 He's coming back." 

44 He's flying! " I gasped. And it almost seemed 
as if he was. 

Harry England was just seven and twenty, then, 
at the full height of a man's best power, and he was, 
though we did not know it, the champion runner of 
the Pacific, as well as the champion middle-weight 
boxer. It was a sight for the gods of Greece to see 
him come, running after his own peculiar way, head 



44 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

rather low, hands clenched, muscles working with the 
magnificent loping ease of a greyhound's stride. 
The pat-pat of his feet sounded hollow on the last 
logs of the jetty, dull upon the track, sharper and 
sharper as it grew near he was upon us, diving 
through the cave arch as an engine goes into a tun- 
nel, and pulling up with a sliding halt, in the loose 
sand where we stood. We saw that the sweat was 
standing in drops on his forehead, and trickling 
down his arms, and that his chest was heaving like 
the sea outside the reef after a storm. We saw that 
he had a dark-colored glass bottle in his hand. We 
had no time to see more, for he opened my father's 
door without pausing to knock, and went in. By 
some mischance, he did not shut it completely, and 
through the crack, where we stood in the dusk of the 
hall, we saw a long narrow picture Lorraine's 
arms and bending waist; my father's chest, still no 
longer, but commencing fearfully to strain and 
writhe in a return of the paroxysm we had wit- 
nessed; the schooner captain's hands, swift, capa- 
ble, pulling out a cork and spilling something over 
a handkerchief. There was a smell of peardrops on 
the air, immediately after. I saw Lorraine's figure 
straighten up, and her face come into view. It bore 
an expression of relief; and the straining figure of 
my father was, all at once, quiet. 

" That's done it," we heard England say. . . . 
" Somebody shut the door. . . ." 

I don't know how time passed after that. I don't 
know how long it was we huddling together in 
the deserted hall, with the sea sounding outside 
before the movements in the room ceased, and, after 
a period of quiet, Harry England came swiftly and 
softly out, Dinah following behind. Luke made 
a step towards the captain, but he did not seem to 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 45 

see any one; he hurried if one could ever say that 
England " hurried " out into the westering sun, 
and away towards his ship down the track where the 
leathernecks were beginning to scold and cackle in 
the palm tops, as they do when day is on the wane. 
"Tobacco, tobacco!" called one. " Oh, do come 
here, oh, do! " complained another. There was 
something reassuring about the homely, well-known 
sound. It seemed to me as if the earthquake had 
passed over as if life were once more standing on 
its firm, familiar basis; as if things would be, to-mor- 
row and the days after, just as they had been " in 
the beginning, and ever should be, world without 
end." . . . 

One knows that world-without-end feeling of 
childhood the strange deception that sets seeming 
marble underneath our feet, where in reality are but 
the crumbling sands of time; the mist-magnified per- 
spective that shows us long roads stretching far and 
far away, changeless, infinite, golden the brief 
road that leads, through rock and precipice, to the 
dark, near, unknown sea. There comes a day to 
every youth when the vision breaks. Thencefor- 
ward he knows; and his knowledge is that there is, 
on earth, no " forever." 

I, Dara Hamilton of the island, was full young 
to learn so much, but Providence had willed that I 
should learn it, on that day. 

England having failed us, I rushed at Dinah, 
seized the corner of her apron, and declared that she 
should not get away until she had told me about 
father. He was all right now, wasn't he? The 
captain had cured him. He would never be ill 
again? 

"Your father," said Dinah "leave go my 
apron, now, Miss Dara, I want to wipe my eyes 



46 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

your father, miss, has got the angelina pictorials 
very bad, and if Captain England hadn't near killed 
himself running down to the ship to get that bottle, 
he'd have been fit for the grave this moment. Cap- 
tain England, God bless him for a hearty gentle- 
man, has left the bottle with us, and he says he'll 
be back in four days from the Hawongas with more. 
Captain England, he put in here for water, because 
his main tank had got salted, and he says he's due 
in Hawonga this mortal moment, and can't stay not 
any longer." 

" Grandad has stopped him just outside," put in 
Luke. " I suppose he's asking about it." And in 
truth I saw, at the moment, Harry England's tall 
figure standing half poised, impatiently, on one foot, 
near the entrance, while old Ivory, with a face of 
calm dismay if such a thing can be : old Ivory 
never got excited talked to him. 

As for myself, my heart was growing cold again, 
with the chill, sick feeling that I had, for the first 
time in my life, met with to-day. Things were not 
going to be right, after all. . . . 

"What did you say it was angel? an- 
gel?" I asked. 

" I know," put in Luke in an undertone. " It's 
' angina pectoris.' They have it in the medical 
book." 

I was not allowed to read the medical book, which 
Luke knew, or I think he would scarce have told me 
so much. The words conveyed little to me. But 
Dinah's face told more. She knew it, and determin- 
edly broke away from me, alleging the instant neces- 
sity of getting back to " her " kitchen. 

" What was the medicine? " I cried after her. 

" He called it nightlight of almonds, but it smelt 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 47 

for all the world more like pears," was Dinah's re- 
ply, as she vanished. 

It was years before I learned such was my 
shrinking horror of everything connected with that 
day of Fate that " nitrite of amyl " had been the 
magic drug. 

Old Ivory's talk seemed to be done. He nodded 
to England, and came into the hall. His face was 
very grave. 

" Luke," he said, " come to my room; I've some- 
thing to speak to you about." 

I was left alone; the sun, now sinking lower, 
looking in at the mouth of the cave. Idly I watched 
it creep like a moving searchlight, from my toes to 
my silken dress, to my waist, to my neck. ... I 
was too tired to think, almost too tired to feel. I 
saw the low light rise, drowning me, slowly, in a 
sea of fire, as the Firth tides, in Scotland, rose once 
about the two doomed women martyrs. As one in 
a dream, I looked at it, at the changing hues it 
made among my silks, at the sparkle that broke out 
as it touched the crystal round my neck climbing, 
always climbing. . . . 

Then I saw that Harry England was not gone. 
He was still at the cave entrance, and he was look- 
ing at me looking at my neck. 

He made two quick steps into the cave. 

" Where did that come from? " he asked me. 

'What?" 

' That bit of crystal round your neck." He was 
beside me now. "May I?" he asked, and with 
deft fingers unfastened the chain. He held the crys- 
tal in his hand, touching it with his finger tips and 
examining the angles. 

" It came from the Hall of Persephone the 



48 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

dining room. It's like those tourist caves in Aus- 
tralia Jenolan, you know." 

" Can you show me this hall? " he asked, giving 
me back my locket. 

" Yes," I said, and led the way. There was no 
one about. Luke and old Ivory were shut up to- 
gether, Lorraine was with my father, Dinah in her 
kitchen. We passed unnoticed down the dark pas- 
sage, and into Persephone's Hall. 

Within, it was almost dark; the one great window 
faces east, and the sun was now far down to west- 
ward. The captain stood in the middle of the hall, 
his vivid, hawk-like eyes roaming about him. He 
took a powerful electric torch from his pocket, and 
snapped it on. Under the strong white light, the 
crystals shone as I had never seen them shine be- 
fore; it was indeed a cave of diamonds. 

England looked about him silently for some mo- 
ments, and then bent to pick up a fragment that had 
fallen from the roof. It was a mere chip of glassy 
stuff, not especially attractive. He glanced at it, 
and slipped it casually into his pocket, snapping off 
the torch as he did so. The hall was dim as we 
made our way out again; I could not see his face. 
I did not judge that he was specially interested. 

"Do you think it is as good as Jenolan?" I 
asked him, jealous of the reputation of our great 
wonder. 

" It's rather like and very pretty," was his an- 
swer. I acquired an impression that he had not 
said quite what he thought. 

" It is as good, I'm sure I'm sure I " I thought 
rebelliously. " Some day I shall go and see that 
other place and I shall think nothing of it at 
all." . . . 

We came out into the central hall. The doors 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 49 

were still shut, the place still silent. The sun now 
had climbed to its last vantage point, and hung, in 
flakes of gold, among the vaultings of the roof. 
Limestone, white as the white sea sands, was the 
stuff of this great cave; but the passage to the Hall 
of Persephone, close at hand, ran through basalt 
black as night. 

England looked at the mingling of the two rocks. 
It seemed to interest him. "Pretty, that contrast 
of black and white," he said. Then, suddenly, he 
stooped to me, and lifted my hair in two great 
waves. " You are pretty," he said, holding me by 
my hair. He slipped his narrow, steel-like hands 
down to my waist, lifted me like a kitten, and, swing- 
ing me in the air, kissed my mouth. Dizzy, I leaned 
against the wall, when he set me down. I had not 
breath to speak. I felt as, I think, young maids of 
harried East Anglia must have felt, in early cen- 
turies, when pirate galleys drove suddenly in from 
" Norroway, o'er the faem," and some tall, gold- 
locked heathen seized a little lassie by the hair, and 
swept her away to the ships with the dragon beaks, 
never to return any more. . . . 

But Captain England had not swept me away; he 
had merely kissed me good-by, as passing guests of 
my father's had done, many a time. Where was 
the difference? 

I did not know. I only knew that Harry Eng- 
land, the wild hawk of the seas, had shaken me in 
his claws, and that the world was shaking and whirl- 
ing round me, because of it. 

With the instinct of a frightened lamb, I rushed 
to the fold, I forgot my father's illness. I flung 
open the door of his room, and ran in; Lorraine was 
there; she was sitting in a chair, reading. My 
father lay on his bed, pale, but to my eyes 



50 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

quite well. There were damp cloths about the 
room; the smell of peardrops still lingered. 

" What is it? " asked Lorraine, raising her em- 
erald eyes from the book. 

I could not say what it was. I did not know. 

" Captain England is gone," I stammered. " I 
said good-by to him." 

" Is he away? " asked Lorraine, rising with that 
inevitable sweep of her draperies. " Some one 
should have thanked him." 

" I don't know," I stammered. 

" I will go and see," said Lorraine, sparing me 
the reproof for awkwardness that would otherwise 
have been my inevitable portion. I followed her 
out to the archway. There was nothing to be seen 
of Harry England; but a sailor, a coffee-brown 
islander, with a plump figure and large black swim- 
ming eyes, was wandering about, apparently look- 
ing for some one. He was very cleanly dressed in 
white drill trousers and blue jumper; he wore a 
broad-brimmed man-of-war hat. While we looked, 
trying to see behind the clumps of the palms, if the 
schooner was making sail, another youth appeared 
and joined the first. They talked in some island 
dialect; their voices were singularly sweet. I saw 
them staring hard at Lorraine and at me. I saw 
Lorraine's expression suddenly change. 

"What's the matter?" I asked her. Lorraine 
was wonderfully clever with island tongues ; she had 
mastered more than one. 

" Do you know what they are saying? " I asked. 

' Yes," she said curtly. 

"What is it?" Even as I asked, I knew she 
would not tell me at least, not any more than she 
chose to tell. 

" They are saying," she answered me, choosing 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 51 

her words, " that they ought not to have come up 
here, but that the captain will be angry if any one 
lets him miss the tide." 

"What else, Lorraine?" She did not answer 
me. 

But the answer came otherwise. A gust of wind 
blew suddenly up the track from the sea it was 
the breeze that comes with the going down of the 
sun and seized the wide hat of one of the sailors. 
He caught at it; and the string that held it under his 
chin gave way; the hat blew off and down over 
the blue jumper, down to the knees of the white drill 
sailor trousers, fell a long, snaky coil of hair. 

The other sailor shrieked, laughed, and fled down 
the track with the unmistakable swaying run of a 
girl. In the same moment Harry England leaped 
from the rocks above the cave arch what he 
could have been doing there was beyond me to 
imagine and landed on the track. He did not 
see Lorraine and myself; the light was low now, and 
we were in the shadow of the cave. More, he did 
not know how could he ? that the short rocky 
defile leading to the archway was a veritable Whis- 
pering Gallery, and carried every sound. He took 
two steps to the blue and white figure with the 
tumbling hair, and spoke to it, not loud, but furi- 
ously; we heard him. I put my hands over my ears. 
I backed into the cave, white and shaking. Lorraine 
retreated with me. She, too, was white. 

" Was that swearing? " I whispered. No one, 
before, had so much as damned an unruly native in 
my presence. 

" Yes," said Lorraine. The captain's figure was 
passing out of sight; the strange sailor had run 
ahead. 

" I have heard of him," said Lorraine, shaken 



52 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

out of her usual self-possession so far as to speak to 
me almost as an equal. " I've heard of the way he 
swears and of those women sailors they say 
there are no men in the Pacific better hands on a 
ship he trained them himself. Of course, he has 
men as well Dara, your father owes his life to 
that man, and you must not forget it, but Captain 
England" she spoke with emphasis "Captain 
England is the wickedest man in the Pacific." 



CHAPTER IV 

AFTER the great tidal wave of emotion that 
had submerged us all on Hiliwa Dara, came 
the ebb of the flood. No one did, or said, or even 
thought very much for three or four days, with 
the exception of old Ivory, who had passed beyond 
the age of passionate feeling, and seemed little, if at 
all, affected by the experience that had changed the 
face of the world for us younger folk. The over- 
seeing of the cocoanut plantation, which was Ivory's 
task, suffered not at all in the days succeeding 
father's terrible attack. Luke dreamed over and 
bungled his lessons and his routine doctoring of the 
trees (you have no idea, unless you are a plantation 
proprietor, how much sickness, and how much 
hospital practice, there is sure to be among your 
rubber trees or palms). I was frankly idle. 
Lorraine was too much occupied in attending father 
to interfere with me; and she, too, I think, was 
suffering from reaction. As for Dinah, nothing on 
earth (or beneath it) could make her more tearful 
or more pessimistic than she habitually was. 

So four days passed. I have never had any very 
clear recollection of that time. The things that came 
before, and after, stand up so high in the memories 
of my life that all else is dimmed in their long 
shadow. 

Have you ever ascended the Peak? The Peak, 
that of Teneriffe, almost the only one of the world's 
great mountains that springs clear from sea level 
to crown without intervening foothills? I have 

53 



54 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

ascended it; I have climbed its twelve thousand feet 
in a day and a half, standing, at evening, on the 
ten thousand foot slope to see the marvel that is 
never forgotten by any who have looked on it 
Teneriffe's sunset. Before you is spread the colossal 
map of the Atlantic, blue, painted with huge 
islands; the pearly-green rim of Teneriffe itself, 
infinitely far down; the tortured, rocky tableland 
of the Canadas, over which you have toiled all day; 
the slopes of the Rambleta cone, with the long warp 
of its track shuttling from side to side. Behind 
you the sun is setting; there is still sunlight at your 
feet, but a purple point, a finger of shadow from 
behind you, is creeping . . . creeping . . . 

The finger broadens to a wave ; the wave engulfs 
you and your comrades, and the shelter hut on 
the terrace where you stand washes the terrace 
itself, flows over the edge. It has touched the 
Canadas now, three thousand feet below you; it is 
flowing across the plain. And now you see its 
shape not formless, but definite; tall, pointed, 
triangular. You cannot, for the moment, remember 
what it is that the thing resembles and then, 
suddenly you know. 

This marvelous shadow, the shadow of the peak 
behind you, is shaped like the pointer of a sundial. 
Like a sundial pointer it moves, on and on. Its 
colossal march shakes your heart; it passes the table- 
lands, vanishes down the outer slopes, and shows 
itself again, sweeping relentlessly onward, like the 
gnomon of Time itself passing over Eternity's dial, 
until at last its purple apex rests upon the ultimate 
sea line, a hundred and fifty miles from where you 
stand, and the finger that crept from beneath your 
feet had spread across the confines of the world, 
and the flood comes up, and there is night . . . 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 55 

Years after my island days, when I stood on the 
mighty Peak, and saw that little shadow " no larger 
than a man's hand " grow and grow and sweep 
across the world, I thought of one day in my life 
the day of which I am now to write. 

It was a dull day, I remember, quiet, with drop- 
ping rain, and sea like a shield of tarnished silver. 
Father had seemed rather weak in the morning, but 
grew brighter towards noon, had a couple of boys 
up from the plantation (he would never let a woman 
do any heavy work) to carry him from his bedroom 
into the study, where he lay on his reading couch, 
the door wide open to the hall. He did not read; 
he seemed to be thinking deeply. Rain came on 
rather heavily towards one; I remember, so well, 
the smell of it through the open archway warm, 
wet dust, and cold odors of driven leaves and 
gusts, now and then, of the new-mown hay smell 
of pandanus trees, thrashed about by the squall. 
We had had dinner; old Ivory was looking for his 
cloak, preparatory to going out again no weather 
ever daunted the determined old man when 
father beckoned him to him from his room. 

Old Ivory stopped short. It seemed as if he 
knew what father wanted of him, for a sudden 
wave of expression crossed his usually impassive 
face. I could not read the meaning of it; yet I 
guessed, somehow, that it concerned a thing he had 
been expecting, and perhaps desiring, too. 
He went into father's room and shut the door, and 
there followed for some time a low murmur of 
voices. 

Then Ivory came out, and his glance went 
straight to me. I thought he was going to speak, 
but he did not; he merely pointed me into my 
father's room. And I, too, went in and shut the 



56 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

door. And I felt I cannot tell how, but I know 
that the certainty seemed to run in my blood and 
beat in my heart that now, this moment, I was 
to know the secret that had been so long kept from 
me. For that there was a secret, and that it con- 
cerned myself, and also my boy comrade, Luke, I 
had been certain of ever since that evening such 
a little while past, and yet so long ago, when I had 
lain with my face hidden in my hair, at father's 
feet, listening to the talk of my elders round the 
fire . . . 

Father, lying on his couch, reached up and took 
my hand. There was love, and sadness, in his eyes. 
He held my fingers, and kept stroking them as he 
spoke. 

" Dara, life's very uncertain," he said. " No one 
knows how long he may have to stay, your daddy 
doesn't know, but he thinks it mightn't be very 
Now, dear child, if you cry how can I talk to you? 
Try and listen to me as quietly as you can, just for 
a minute " He was still holding and stroking 
my hand; the touch of his long white fingers seemed 
to soothe me. I ceased my sobs, and looked at him. 
What did the future matter? The future was a 
thing that didn't exist. To-day did exist, and here 
was father, alive and holding my hand. 

" That's right," he said. " Sit down on the end 
of the lounge, and we'll talk sensibly. You must 
try hard to understand me, Dara; you are only a 
little girl, but I've got to talk to you as if you were 
much older, because when you are grown up, I 
shan't have the chance." He broke off for a 
moment, and closed his eyes. 

"Are you in pain, father?" I cried. "Shall I 
fetch Lorraine ? " 

" I am in pain, my dear," he said, opening his 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 57 

eyes again, and fixing on me a look that I could not 
understand. " But it's not a pain that Lorraine 
can do any good to." The memory of childhood 
misses nothing. Years and years after, when life 
had taught me separation and sorrow, I remembered 
the look there was on father's face as he spoke to 
me so calmly; I understood just what was the 
thought he had had of me in the days to come, 
walking alone on roads that he was never to see. 
Were they to be smooth or stony? Were they to 
lead through deserts, or through orchard lands and 
flowers? He could not know. 

It was this agony, not any pain of his illness, that 
had made him close his eyes, to hide the wave of 
sorrow that swept over his brave heart. 

I saw that he was troubled, and groped, in my 
childish way, after the cause. 

' You are thinking that I can't understand what 
you want to say, father," I cried. " But I'm sure 
I can, I will try so hard and I know a little about 
it already; it has something to do with Luke, 
hasn't it?" 

" It has everything to do with him," was father's 
answer, and then he was silent for a moment, trying, 
I think, to put what he had to say into the shortest 
and simplest form. In the stillness I heard the sea 
breathing heavily, a long way off. I heard a broken 
murmur of people talking in the hall; a plantation 
boy, outside, kept on steadily chopping firewood 
shack-shack! shack-shack! again. 

My father spoke slowly, and making choice of 
words. It is only in these days that I can realize 
the difficulty of his task. 

" Mr. Ivory and I have seen a great deal of 
unhappy marriages. When we decided to run 
Hiliwa Dara Plantation together, we had the 



58 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

thought that we might save Luke and you from that 
sorrow. We thought that if two children were kept 
away from the evils of the world during the young 
years that matter most, brought up pure and good, 
and intentionally reared for each other, their charac- 
ters would grow together you remember Shake- 
speare ' So we grew together, like to a double 
cherry ' and they would have every chance two 
mortals can have of happiness in marriage. Well, 
it seems to promise better than we could have 
thought. I bargained in my own mind only for an 
average nice lad, and I've found Luke who is, my 
dear daughter, though you don't know it, and won't 
for many years who is something quite uncommon 
and fine in the way of boys, and will be a man in ten 
thousand. As for you, Dara darling, you are pretty 
and you are loving, which is all a man wants or 
knows he wants in his wife; and Lorraine and I 
between us have taken care that you shall have more 
firmness of character than most loving women have. 
Half the tragedies of life come from the fact that 
loving women are very often weak, and strong 
women not loving or not lovable But I'm 
going above your little head, now." 

He stopped I think he needed to take breath 
and ran his hand lovingly through my cloak of 
copper hair. 

" Now don't speak now," he said, as I opened 
eager lips, " you will have time to talk by and by. 
We agreed, Ivory and I, that you and Luke were to 
be engaged as early as possible; we'd fixed that when 
you were fourteen and he was fifteen, you would be 
old enough to know at least what you were doing, 
and that you should give a conditional kind of 
promise to one another then. Lorraine and I 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 59 

had settled that you must be sent to school for a 
year, and fourteen would be as good a time as any. 
At fifteen you could have come back to the island; 
Luke was to return the next year, when you were 
sixteen and he eighteen, and we had planned 
Ivory and I to have the wedding then, or a year 
later." 

"Does Luke know?" I burst in, exceedingly 
interested. I could keep silence no longer. 

" Ivory told him to-day, and asked if he had any 
objection to the plan. It was only just to you to do 
so before speaking to you." 

" Why? " I interrupted again. 

" Because, in the event of his having any feeling 
whatever against it, nothing would have been said 
to you, and you would not have had the humiliation 
of knowing." 

" What did he say? " I demanded, in the wildest 
excitement. This seemed to me the funniest, most 
entertaining, altogether most piquant incident that 
had yet marked my short life. 

" He said that it was not altogether news to him, 
from things he could not help hearing and notic- 
ing the boy is growing up very fast and he 
said that nothing in the world would please him 
more. I haven't finished yet, Dara. There's a 
great deal to come, but it can be put in a very few 
words for all that." 

" Well, I don't know what more there could 
possibly be," I exclaimed, sitting up very straight 
on the end of the couch and throwing back my hair. 
" It's a perfect Niagara of things happening as 
it is." 

" There is more," said my father slowly. " It 
is difficult to explain to you. Dara, you must let 



60 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

me say, without any more tears, my darling, that I 
know my time is short. Things have been alto- 
gether changed by this illness of mine " 

" I will let you say anything you like, because I 
don't believe it," I burst in. " I know you are going 
to live for years and years till you are quite, quite 
old, as old as forty " 

My father laughed a little. His forty-fifth birth- 
day, as I know now, was just a day behind him. 

" So I won't cry, because there is nothing to cry 
about," I finished. " And now, father, what more 
is there? Am I going to school?" 

" Soon, Dara, very soon, but not just now. A 
little longer yet . . ." 

He seemed to be half dreaming for a moment; 
and I heard him, softly, repeating to himself the 
words of a forgotten poet: 

" A little longer yet, a little longer, 
The tenderness of twilight shall be thine." . . . 

' Then is Luke going? " I interrupted. 

' Yes. Luke is going to-morrow afternoon." 

" Oh, oh, father ! Lorraine will never be able 
to get his shirts all ready 1 " 

" If she doesn't, more can be bought. It is not a 
matter of shirts, girlie. Captain England is coming 
back in the morning; the boys saw his sail just over 
the horizon, from the top of the island a little while 
ago, and you know it always takes a sailing ship 
overnight to get in here, at this time of the year, if 
she isn't sighted till afternoon. England is always 
in a hurry; he is coming to leave the medicine he 
offered to get me from the Hawongas, and we must 
be prepared not to delay him." 

I digested this information in silence for a moment 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 61 

or two. I thought I was glad was I ? that the 
romantic, wicked schooner and her dark sea hawk 
of a captain were to return; I was sorry that my 
good comrade Luke was going so soon. . . . The 
two emotions seemed to toss and beat against one 
another in a very tideway of feeling. I could not 
find words to express either. 

Father went on: 

" Luke is going to-morrow afternoon. And to- 
morrow morning, Dara, it is the great wish of 
Mr. Ivory and myself and, I may say, of Luke 
also though he hardly counts, at his age that 
you and he should be married." 

Now I sprang to my feet and stared, as if my 
father had said " hanged." 

" But, father," I stammered, " only grown-up 
ladies are married. How could I be? " 

" That is what I have to explain, and you must 
listen carefully just as if you were at lessons," said 
my father. " Hiliwa Dara Island belongs to the 
Hawongas, though it is so far out. Now the 
Hawongas are under British, not Australian or any 
other colonial, law. And England sets the minimum 
age for marriage with the consent of parents and 
guardians at twelve and fourteen. You and Luke 
are old enough to marry, with the consent of Ivory 
and myself. And Mr. Ivory is an ordained minister, 
licensed to perform marriages in the diocese of 
Hawonga. You remember his marrying Lala and 
the overseer." For there had been a native mar- 
riage on the plantation not many months before. 

" Do you understand?" asked my father. 

" Yes," I said. " Yes, father, I think so. 
But why does nobody get married at twelve if 
that is so? Wouldn't it be fun if they did? " I went 
on, laughing. " Imagine the brides in long stock- 



62 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

ings running up the aisle, and the bridegroom sucking 
toffee in the carriage! And wouldn't they enjoy 
their wedding cake, with nobody to say ' You have 
had quite enough.' Father, shall we have a cake? 
Oh, do say we shall." The thought of a wedding 
cake all my own, such as I had seen pictured in our 
many magazines, and such as I had tasted in little 
wedges sent, boxed, through the post, seized on my 
mind, and quite drove out the remembrance of the 
first question I had asked. But father answered it, 
nevertheless. 

"It's not quite unknown. The poet Edgar Allan 
Poe married a girl of thirteen, and so did the 
novelist Mayne Reid. But it is not thought wise, 
for many reasons you are too young to understand, 
that very young people should marry. Such a case 
as yours hardly ever arises." 

He did not tell me what my case was; I thought I 
understood, but I did not know that father on his 
deathbed, and Ivory, beginning now to stagger 
under the weight of nearly ninety years, knew they 
had all but lost in the race with Time, and were, 
for that reason, resolved to have their will carried 
out before the tireless runner with the scythe went 
past them, on the post. . . . 

On that point I was easily satisfied. 

" But about the cake? " I demanded. This was 
really important. Only once in your life could you 
hope to own a whole large cake, of the richest kind, 
all to yourself. 

" You shall have one," answered father, with a 
smile. " The best that Dinah can make." 

" With plums, and citron, and lots of white icing 
on top?" 

" Certainly." 

"May I go and tell her?" 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 63 

" Yes. And after you have attended to that 
matter, you had better speak to Luke." 

I did not catch the tone of sarcasm; no doubt it 
was not intended that I should. Yet memory 
reproduces it, after all these years. Very, very 
young, even for twelve, I must have appeared to 
father. I wonder now that I did not hesitate. . . . 
But the hand of Death was on him; and he must 
have felt, I think, that any and every means were 
justifiable by which my future might be secured. 

How well I can follow his thoughts of me in the 
light of all that came after! Pretty, impulsive, 
ever warm-hearted for safety, a girl sure to love 
and to sorrow, a girl with her mother's sad heredity 
behind her I can understand that the thoughts of 
my future, orphaned, pressed like a stone on his 
heart. And Luke and I were such good com- 
rades and we had been, as I now was told, con- 
sciously reared to suit, to love, to mate with one 
another. And a lower, yet an important phase 
of the question Hiliwa Dara plantations, if 
divided, were no great fortune for two, but if kept 
together and managed by the lad who had been 
reared on the island and trained to plantation work, 
they would furnish, all our lives, a decent, comfort- 
able, steadily rising income. 

Yes, I can see my father's point of view. And 
yet, for all that, I think that he and Ivory played 
rashly with my fate. He who lays violent hands on 
the future of another, even in love, too certainly 
sows sorrow. 

Luke, rising fifteen, and, like all the Ivorys, manly 
while yet a boy, must, I think, have received some- 
thing of a shock when I rushed out of my father's 
room, burning with my important news and, seeing 
him in the hall, called out this only " Come and 



64 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

tell Dinah about our cake ! " I remember still the 
look that he gave me half laughing, half pitiful 
as he came across the hall to meet me and, taking 
my little hand so small inside his great brown 
paw went with me down the dark, windy corridor 
that led to Dinah's domain. 

It was a fine room, this kitchen. Father and 
Ivory had spent a good deal of money on it; it was 
concreted all over, roof, walls and floor; and 
lighted since the cavern was too far in for win- 
dows by a couple of big lamps. There was an 
excellent stove, imported from Sydney, and Dinah's 
battery of cooking utensils, polished up like so much 
jewelry, made a brave show upon the walls. 

" Dinah," I shrieked, frog-jumping into the room, 
" have you heard the news? " 

" I have," she answered, turning round with a 
saucepan in one hand and a spoon in the other, " but 
I doubt if you have, Miss Dara, by the way you're 
behaving; or, if you have, I doubt you haven't under- 
stood it. Young ladies that's going to be married 
didn't ought to frog-hop. There's only one thing 
as serious as a marriage, and that's a funeral, and 
you never seen no one frog-hopping in the presence 
of a corpse. Nor should you see any one that's as 
good as standing before the altar. On my wedding 
day with my poor husband, that's lying inside of a 
first quality cash-iron railing to-day, I walked up the 
church as serious as I walked up it after his coffin 
four years and two weeks after." 

Strange to say, it was this speech of Dinah's 
entirely typical of her topsy-turvy view of life 
that first made me understand, by ever so little, the 
nature of the estate on which I, a careless child, was 
entering. Luke had never troubled himself before 
to interfere when Dinah, or any one else, reproved 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 65 

my childish faults. But now I saw his deep blue 
eyes suddenly take fire, and he laid his hand pro- 
tectingly on my arm. 

" Dara shall walk or jump in any way that she 
likes, so long as / don't object," he said; and there 
were at least a dozen capitals in the " I." 

Dinah dropped the point at issue. 

" I suppose you want something, Miss Dara, or 
you wouldn't be here," she observed, stirring at her 
saucepan. 

" We want," put in Luke before I could speak, 
" we want you to make us the best kind of cake you 
can for to-morrow. With icing and everything 
good. You know, I'm going away by the schooner, 
and it'll be your last chance for a long, long time." 

Dinah laid down the saucepan deliberately, 
handed me the spoon, and said in a muffled voice 
" Stir it, miss, again it doesn't burn," and flowed into 
tears one could never say she " burst " the 
process was too calm. 

" There is nothing but deaths and separations in 
this world," she sighed. " When I left home and 
come out to Australia by the Sewage Canal it was all 
saying good-by; and then my husband died, and 
then I come up here with your father and Miss 
Hamilton, and it was good-bys to every one then, 
and now, Master Luke, it's you, and will be Miss 
Dara soon, and I shall miss you, though you do go 
galloping through my stores like young Corsages on 
the stairs of Russher." She wept more loudly. 

" You shall have the cake," she sobbed from 
behind her apron. " It's the last thing I can do for 
either of you. Our loss is your gain, Master Luke, 
and I hope it'll be well with you." 

I incline to think nowadays that Dinah's love for 
and frequent attendance at funerals had resulted in 



66 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

permanently affecting her choice of language. Cer- 
tainly any stress of emotion always brought out the 
conventional mourner phrase. 

Weeping, she motioned away the saucepan which 
I presented to her, being by this time tired of 
stirring. 

" Set it away," she said, in a tone of one who 
renounces worldly things. " This is no time for 
white sauces. If I'm to be ready before the end, I 
must be beating my eggs now. Perhaps you'd not 
mind, though it is your last day, Master Luke, 
sending one of the boys to the henhouse as quick as 
you can find him." 

" Come on, Dara," said Luke. I think he found 
the atmosphere a trifle too emotional; boylike, he 
hated scenes. 

Under the great archway, as we came into the 
hall, the sun was beginning to slant, as it always did 
in the latter hours of the afternoon as it had 
done on that afternoon four days ago, when the wild 
hawk of the islands, finding me alone, had swooped 
down and touched me in the midst of his fierce 
flight. It might have seemed strange to me, had I 
been old enough to think about such things at all, 
that I remembered that kiss of Harry England's; 
that I, to whom kisses hitherto had been alike and 
all indifferent, could feel it on my lips as I stood in 
the waning sunlight, and looked out to the far blue 
strip of sea on which, even now, the Queen of the 
Islands was speeding fast to Hiliwa Dara and to me. 

Luke seemed to have nothing to say; he looked at 
me once or twice, with that strange, sweet, pitiful 
kindness that I had noticed before, opened his lips, 
hesitated, and turned away. 

" Aren't you going to see about the eggs? " I 
reminded him. 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 67 

" Yes, I'll go and see about the eggs," he said, 
and went. 

"What is the use of talking to her?" was his 
thought (I did not know it then, but years after- 
wards I did) " She cannot understand anything 
serious." 

And yet I understood, better than he thought. 
All the rest of that afternoon one phrase, one tone 
of voice were ringing in my mind, "... Any 
way so long as / don't object." . . . 

It was the husbandly tone, though I did not know 
it, though Luke was but a boy. And I, who was no 
more than a child, was yet woman enough, with the 
experience of all the race behind me, to feel that tone 
strike coldly on my heart. . . . 

In the evening my father had the couch carried 
out of his room for the first time since his attack, and 
lay in the center of the great cave hall, by the light 
of the driftwood fire, as had always been our custom 
on Hiliwa Dara. He seemed tired very, very 
tired but entreated, lying there in the midst of 
us all old Ivory seated on his seaweed-cushioned 
throne, Lorraine in her deck chair; Dinah, with a 
poor-relation air of humility about her, knitting 
somewhere in the background; Luke and I sprawling 
on the fire-warmed sand. It was much to my 
father, I think, to see even once again that family 
group. He had not thought, in these last days, to 
see it. 

Ivory read prayers, selecting for the Scripture 
portion the latter part of the fifth chapter of Ephe- 
sians, and thundering out St. Paul's exhortations to 
wives, with special emphasis on all the texts about 
obedience. His Michael-Angelo-Moses manner was 
in full swing that night ; I know he longed to get up 
and preach a sermon. But he let us off with a 



68 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

specially lengthened prayer, containing so many 
" g a g s " aimed at myself, and so many quotations 
about Rachael and Sarah and other stuffy Biblical 
matrons that I nearly fell asleep before it was over. 
When the Doxology, boomed forth in a tone that 
suggested anything but blessing, set us free, I hopped 
up with all possible speed, and stretched myself 
yawningly and irreverently before lying down in my 
favorite posture in the sand. Ivory had stalked off 
to put away his books. 

" Do you suppose," I asked Luke, " that I'm 
going to obey you? " 

" I don't suppose anything," answered Luke. 
" But I know you're going to promise to." 

;' Do you think I will?" 

" I suppose you will, when I'm in the right and 
you're wrong." 

" You mean to be always in the right, don't 
you?" 

" I mean to try." 

I looked at him. It struck me, all at once, as 
passing strange that I was to spend my life all 
my life all those long future years when Ivory 
would be dead, and father would be dead, and 
Dinah and Lorraine, and no one left but Luke and 
myself with just this Luke, this heavy-browed, 
calm-eyed lad who was beside me now. For the 
moment it frightened me. Marriage, all in an in- 
stant, became something quite other than the joke, 
the exciting, funny incident of a day, that I had been 
considering it. It loomed up large and long 
amazingly long. 

Father drew me to him, stroking my hair he 
was proud of my pretty hair, as I think my mother 
might have been. In his other hand he took a hand 
of Luke's. 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 69 

" Listen, you children," he said, in that sweet, 
silvery voice of his the voice of one (I know it 
now) not fated to live long ..." This ceremony 
that you will go through to-morrow is the attempt 
that Mr. Ivory and I have made to cheat Fate for 
the two people we love best. We've worked to that 
end ever since you were babies. Luke, you may 
have thought your grandfather sometimes hard " 

Ivory had been hard; I have not the space to tell, 
nor would it advantage any one if I did, all the de- 
tails of that Spartan rearing. 

" But he has always kept not only your welfare in 
his mind, but my little girl's as well. And Lorraine 
and I have thought of you, Luke, more than you 
could understand, in our bringing up of Dara. We 
have faith in you both, and to-morrow we are putting 
that faith to the test. We elders are committing 
you two to a promise that will tie your future. 
If, when you are both of age, you should mutually 
decide that the promise had better not have been 
given, it will, I think, be possible for the law to 
break it before it passes into the bond that is, in the 
eyes of all good men and women, unbreakable, that 
of true marriage. One of you will not be able to 
break it without the consent of the other. I hope, 
and I believe, that no questions of this kind can arise 
at any time; but I am speaking of it so that you may 
both understand every view of the matter. 

"Never in the future can you, Luke once to- 
morrow is past mortgage your life and the char- 
acter of your children to unworthy, enticing women 
such as you are sure to meet with again and again. 
You, Dara, can never make the mistake of marrying 
a man who does not understand you, or a man whose 
character is such that I would not wish to put your 
hand in his, if I were there if I were there " . ... 



70 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

The silver voice almost broke, but recovered 
itself, and went on : 

" We may have taken from you something that 
youth values the love quest, the wonder, the sur- 
prise of finding your mate but we've given you, 
we hope and trust, something better the certainty 
of quiet happiness." 

Luke and I had been listening, almost as if it were 
Sunday and old Ivory were reading service. I do 
not know how much Luke understood of all that my 
father said; I think he missed very little, if any- 
thing, of the deep meanings that underlay that silver 
speech. For me, much of what my father said was 
merest words but I could sense the solemnity of 
it all, perhaps, as well as Luke. Dinah had slipped 
away; we had quite forgotten Lorraine. But she 
recalled herself to our minds before the last words 
were fairly out of my father's mouth. 

I can see her now, standing, in her black robes, 
drawn up to her full height, her long white hands, 
so like my father's, hanging straight at her sides, 
her emerald eyes shining in the light of the emerald 
driftwood flames. Her head was somewhat raised, 
her chin seemed to point at my father, almost like a 
mocking hand. 

" Arthur," she said, " I have only one word to 
say to you, and that is Stop. Stop before it's too 
late." 

Father looked at her. 

" You know, Lorraine," he said, " that you and I 
think differently." 

" I think," said Lorraine, and now her voice rang 
out with the note in it as of a wild bird singing 
singing with a thorn in its heart ..." I think that 
you're robbing those two children of the only thing 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 71 

on earth that makes this wretched life of ours worth 
living." 

' That has been all talked out," answered my 
father. ' You know what I think. What Ivory 
thinks. What every one thinks who has suffered as 
we have. We think that the one in a million chance 
of the thing you speak of is not enough to stake the 
whole of life on." 

" And I think," said Lorraine, " I who never held 
more than the shadow of it in my arms I think 
that even that shadow is worth the substance of a 
hundred drowsy years. I think, with that wise old 
man whose book you locked up for fear the children 
should read him: 

1 ' One glimpse of it within the tavern caught, 
Better than in the temple lost outright.' " 

Her voice died down; she stood looking at the 
flames, and at the ashes of the flames that had been. 

" Lorraine," said my father very gently, " it is 
time for bed." 



CHAPTER V 

AND the night passed, and the dawn came, and it 
-*\ was my wedding day. 

Very early I rose, before the birds in the dark 
mango domes outside my window were well awake, 
before the sound of the hacking tomahawks from 
the woodshed told that the cooky-boys were busy 
making fires. I bathed and dressed the tide was 
too low for swimming to-day and went out into 
the early dawn light alone. 

It was the gray hour when the world is still and, 
waiting, holds its breath. The sea, at low neap 
tide, lay as if dead beyond the fringing reef, gray 
glass in color, with drifts of black, moveless weed. 
The sky, here to westward, was wool gray, touched 
with faintest pink, as of a faded shell. Out on the 
water, a long way out, pale fires beneath the light- 
ening sky were waking up to life. And in the midst 
of the fires, a picture of tinted ivory touched with 
gold, lay waiting, motionless, the Queen of the 
Islands. 

I cannot describe how that sight struck me on the 
heart. But you, to whom ships of Fate have come 
sailing with their freight of sorrow or of joy, will 
know. You people of the vast Pacific world, above 
all, will understand; for to you all grief, all gladness, 
fortune and misfortune, life and death itself comes 
by the white wings of sailing ships or behind the 
black funnel of the steamer. You know, as people 
of the continents cannot know, the long, drugged 

72 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 73 

calm, with all events in abeyance, all thoughts held 
in suspense, that marks the interval between boat 
and boat the childlike absorption in little things 
of the moment, the fancy that does not range beyond 
the events of a day and a night. You know, too, 
the sudden tearing of the veil, the breaking of the 
dream, that comes with the first sight of trailing 
smoke on the horizon, or the pricking up of a tiny 
point of sail away on the line that is for us, without 
metaphor, the very rim of the world. . . . 

I saw the Queen of the Islands; I felt, what I had 
only known before, that Luke and I were to be 
parted to-day, and I struck my hands before my face 
and wept. 

The tears may not have been all for him, I could 
not have known then that they were not. But there 
may I say it now, after years of wider knowl- 
edge there may, in the strange emotions that over- 
powered me, have been a drop of the stirring, 
intoxicating philter that had been held to my lips on 
the day when Harry England, the wild hawk of the 
islands, paused at Hiliwa Dara in his flight. Oliver 
Wendell Holmes has said that all emotions in 
women of a certain age, or rather youth, run to love. 
I think that in a girl above all a girl who is near- 
ing the emotional age " Where the brook and river 
meet " all feelings, whether of deep sorrow or 
deep joy, run to tears. I think that, on that morn- 
ing of my Fate, both were held, hidden, in my 
weeping. 

Luke's hand on my shoulder roused me. 

" What are you crying for? " he asked; but I felt 
that he knew. It seemed hardly necessary to 
answer, as he drew my hands down from my wet 
eyes: 

" Because you are going away to-day." 



74 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

" Dear little Dara," he said, with more tender- 
ness than I had ever heard in his voice. " You 
were not crying about anything else? " 

" Oh, no," I said, and indeed I thought so. 

I wiped my eyes with my small knuckles, having, 
as usual, lost my handkerchief. Luke, whom I now 
perceived to be splendidly dressed in a new white 
suit with coat and long trousers, took a clean hand- 
kerchief from his pocket, and gave it to me. 

' Why, you are all dressed up," I said wonder- 
ingly. " Where did you get the clothes from? " 

" It's the suit that Gran has been keeping for me 
to wear for going away to school. It ought to be 
too big, because he didn't intend to send me for 
another year, but you see I fill it out." 

" I wonder are you big for a boy of your 
age?" 

" I don't know, but I think I must be. It's 
dreadful to think how much I don't know, about 
everything. Of course I remember how things look 
in towns, because I was six when we came here, but 
I don't know what boys of my own age are like, 
except from books, and I can't play football it's 
good luck that your father taught me cricket and 
I've never had to spend money, and oh, lots of 
things." 

" Why, Luke, father says you're the best edu- 
cated boy of your age he ever knew." 

" I shall pass the exams, all right. But boys 
don't like you because you know your lessons. I 
may get on with them because I'm strong, and have 
learned boxing; it's wonderful what Grandad knows 
about it, for a missionary and an old man. He's 
taught me everything " Luke broke off a moment, 
and I suspected, again, abysses of strange knowledge 
in which I, as a girl, was expected to have no share. 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 75 

" He has been very good to me. I can see it now. 
You know, Dara, I have a feeling that I may never 
see him again." 

" Why, Luke, of course you will." 

" I don't know. He is almost ninety, and lately 
I can't help thinking he isn't quite what he used to 
be. And he said, once, ' When I go, my boy, I 
shall go as men of my kind do I shan't die inch 
by inch, I shall fall like a forest tree.' And I am 
not to come back again for four years." 

" I don't want you to go away for four years," 
I said, waiving the question of old Ivory, which 
seemed to me unimportant. "I'll have nobody to 
talk to because Lorraine is nobody, and I'm not 
allowed to talk to natives, and father is sick, and 
mustn't be bothered. It will be horrid. How am 
I going to stand it for four years? " 

" You won't have to," said Luke. " They mean 
to send you to school in the Hawongas, at Port 
Hervey. Your father thinks, as you are going to 
live in the tropics, you had better not be taken 
away South. Grandad says he doesn't agree with 
him; but he thinks it doesn't matter very much. 
You know he's awfully old-fashioned about women." 

" I shall like Port Hervey; I've seen lots of 
pictures of it. When am I going? " I asked excit- 
edly. 

Luke hesitated, and looked at me strangely, 
almost sadly. 

" I think in a few weeks," he said, " but don't say 
anything about it. They may not have meant to 
tell you . . . yet." 

I could not translate the " yet." Nevertheless 
the day was to come and soon when its mean- 
ing was to be all too clear to me. 

I opened my mouth, primed with a dozen different 



76 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

questions. Luke seemed to be unusually, delight- 
fully communicative this morning. 

" Don't ask me anything more," he warned 
hastily. " I've been talking almost too much 
already." 

" Well, just one thing." 

" What? " 

'' What are you going to do in four years? " 

" Come back here and manage the plantation 
with you." 

"Will you like that?" 

;t I'll like it very much. And, Dara " 

"Yes?" I had my head turned towards the 
cave house ; I thought I was almost certain that 
I could smell a delicious smell of baking cake . . . 
Dinah must have mixed it overnight, and given it a 
first touch in the " bain Marie " which meant that 
it was a very rich and heavy cake. It must be, 
surely, the best she had ever . . . 

" Dara I mean to try and make you very 
happy, and keep you from all sorrow." Luke's 
voice was very low; I could hardly catch what he 
said. 

;< Thank you," I answered him, with the polite- 
ness that Lorraine had carefully instilled into me. 
I wanted to talk about the cake, but felt it would be 
better to wait for a minute. " Never change sub- 
jects abruptly," was one of my aunt's lessons. 

" Miss Dara I " came a voice from the house, 
" I'm waiting to give you your clean dress." 

The sun was up it had sprung with a leap from 
the eastern sea, " coming forth as a bridegroom from 
his chamber " and all the world was bright; and 
far, far out the tide that was to take my boy bride- 
groom away from me was already making towards 
the land. 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 77 

" Go, Dara," said Luke. There was something 
a little disappointed in his tone; I did not under- 
stand it. But there was so much in those days that 
I did not understand. 

I ran towards the house and left him, a strange, 
graceful figure of boyhood, the wind that had risen 
with the dawn stirring his dark hair, his blue eyes 
fixed upon the ship that lay far out at sea. 

I found Dinah laying out on the bed my solitary 
white dress, a plain smock of linen, and the white 
canvas shoes and white cotton stockings that were 
kept for special occasions. I had always been in the 
habit of dressing myself, but to-day that was not 
permitted. Dinah slipped on and fastened my 
frock, laced my shoes, and tied my hair with a new 
white ribbon, softly shedding tears as she did so, and 
calling me a "lamb." She made me feel I do 
not know why as if I were a corpse, and she was 
preparing me for burial. The feeling was not in 
any way lessened rather the reverse when she 
produced a bridal wreath, which she had manufac- 
tured herself, with a hand too reminiscent of 
another kind of work. It was a large, fat circle of 
heavily scented white flowers, woven closely together 
round a ring of cane, and it looked as if the only 
thing it wanted were a ribbon with " R. I. P." on it. 

This ornament she set upon my hair, deeply 
moved, as she did so, and wiping her eyes. 

" Now, Miss Dara, you're done, and you make a 
lovely sight," she said. " Go and sit down in the 
dining room till Mr. Ivory comes, and don't go 
playing about; I wouldn't like to see you standing 
up there all decomposed." 

I had not long to wait. They had already 
carried my father's chair into the Hall of Per- 
sephone; Mr. Ivory was there, looking up places in 



78 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

books; Lorraine and Luke came in together, imme- 
diately after. Dinah delayed a little while in the 
kitchen, and this gave Lorraine time to undo some 
of her work. 

" In Heaven's name, child," she said, snatching 
at my hair none too gently, " who put that grave- 
yard thing on your head? " She was unfastening it 
as she spoke, and in another moment had thrown it 
out of the window. She glanced at my father 
uneasily. He only smiled in reply. 

" My dear Lorraine, I'm not superstitious," he 
said. " It's you who see portents and omens. 
Don't start seeing any now, to put ideas in sensitive 
little heads." 

" Well," said Lorraine, going closer to his chair. 
I know she did not mean me to hear her, but the 
echo in the Hall of Persephone was treacherous, 
"you remember on my- you remember that 
morning . . ." 

" People can't help having funerals, my dear 
Lorraine; I suppose there were a score in town that 
day besides the one you happened to meet." 

Lorraine said nothing more. She sighed a little, 
and glided away from my father's chair. Dinah 
now appeared from the kitchen, wearing a pious 
expression and an immense flat hat of prehistoric 
style. She carried in her hand a prayer book, 
wrapped in a clean handkerchief. She was, all too 
obviously, sucking strong peppermints not, I 
think, because she liked them especially, but because 
they were in her mind associated with church. . . . 

Old Ivory found his place and closed his book, 
leaving one finger in. 

"Now, Luke and Dara, I am ready," he said; 
and we moved forward, I with an odd unpleasant 
feeling of having lessons to repeat and not knowing 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 79 

a word of them. We stood in the light of the 
window embrasure, where the early sun was burning 
bright on the crystal pillars, and striking, in the old, 
wonderful way, prismatic lights of violet, red, and 
green from the hanging candelabra. I looked at 
Luke. He was amazingly pale, but very self- 
possessed. His new white suit, I thought, became 
him well . . . 

There was a moment's pause; the sea, outside the 
window, struck angrily upon the sloping cliff 
once twice 

Then Ivory's voice arose: 

" Dearly beloved, we are gathered together . . ." 



It was done; we rose to our feet, still holding 
hands, a little awkwardly. I think we were not 
quite sure what we ought to do next. The words of 
the ceremony, thundered out in Ivory's loudest 
Michael-Angelo-Moses style, had passed over my 
small head as the crashing northwest-season storms 
passed over the safe, low caves of Hiliwa Dara. 
The sentences I had repeated, bit by bit, seemed to 
me like a lesson a Sunday lesson, with a flavor of 
Bible and boredom about it. Luke had said his part 
of the lesson oddly with a curious accent of earnest- 
ness, a quiver of feeling, that struck me as inexpress- 
ibly funny. There was one thing, and one thing 
only, about the ceremony that had moved me the 
ring. It was no ugly plain band, but a pretty 
trinket of filigree gold and forget-me-nots, a delicate 
thing that I had been used to see hanging on my 
father's watch chain. I knew it had been my 
mother's; I knew, too, that he did not like to talk 
about it, else I had put in a claim for it long ago. 

And to-day this ring was mine tiny, exquisite, 



80 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

just fitting my small third finger . . . She must 
have had little hands who wore it before me. Little 
hands, as I have known in later years, that could 
hold to nothing; not home; not peace, nor love, nor 
duty, nor even her baby child, nor, last of all, to 
life . . . 

Her ring was mine; Luke had slipped it on my 
small, warm hand, speaking as he did so strange, 
serious words, dictated to him by the silver-bearded 
old prophet standing over us. It must be remem- 
bered that I had not, like most girl children, laughed 
with little companions over mock weddings, with veils 
reft from the window curtain, and tiny petticoated 
clergymen; I had never read the Marriage Service, 
nor been present at a wedding. The great, solemn 
words fell on my ear for the first time on the day 
when they were spoken, at Ivory's slow dictation, by 
my boy comrade, Luke. 

As I have said, they passed over my head, and 
made but little impression. In after years, I remem- 
bered, I could have told things that I never knew I 
had heard or seen on that fateful morning. I could 
have told ten years beyond that day just how 
Ivory's voice rose up, sonorously, with the power of 
its long church training, into the shadowed vaults 
of the crystal roof above; how there was always a 
little pause before Luke's quiet tones replied; how 
I stumbled, and lost my way and was prompted 
right again ; how Dinah, on her knees, wept straight 
from beginning to end; how Lorraine stood, as if in 
protest, tall and black, a blot upon the dazzling 
crystal light, and my father lay on his couch, 
watching, silent, strangely restful and content. 

But on that morning I was clearly conscious of 
two things alone that it was all very funny and 
a little boring, and that I had got a gold and blue 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 81 

ring, which was to be mine to keep. Luke, at some 
signal from old Ivory, loosed my hand, bent over 
me from his sturdy height, and placed a cool, shy 
kiss upon my cheek. I kissed him back with a 
hurried peck, and held up my hand triumphantly. 

"Doesn't it look lovely?" I said. "Ever so 
much nicer than your ring, Dinah." 

Dinah, her large, blunt features swelled almost 
unrecognizably with crying, could only shake her 
head in reply. But my father, first looking at Ivory, 
as if he would say that there was another matter 
wanting attention, beckoned to Luke and myself. 

" Dara," he said, when we were standing side by 
side at his couch, " I had a reason for giving you 
that ring, and no other. It isn't a wedding ring, as 
commonly used. But it is the one you will wear till 
you and Luke make your home together. And I 
want you both to promise solemnly that, until that 
time comes, you will not speak of what has been 
done to-day to any one. There are very good 
reasons for keeping silent about it. You would be 
annoyed made fun of you would be made the 
butt of foolish, vulgar jokes. Most people, as 
you've yet to learn, are very vulgar-minded. For 
your own protection, I want that promise from both 
of you." 

Old Ivory brought forward his large, black- 
bound, silver-clasped Bible. 

" I don't think that's " began father. 

" Has it been in your experience," demanded 
Ivory, " that women generally can hold their 
tongues? " 

Father was silent. 

" Then let me have my own way about this," went 
on Ivory, accepting the silence as an answer. " I 
can hardly believe that a girl brought up as piously 



82 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

as Dara has been would look lightly on an oath made 
upon the Holy Scriptures." 

" No, no, I wouldn't," I assured him, answering 
the tone rather than the words; for it seemed to me 
that Mr. Ivory, somehow, was disapproving of 
something I didn't know what that I might be 
likely to do some day I didn't know how or when. 
And I did not like being disapproved. 

Old Ivory took my hand, not the one on which my 
new, beautiful ring was glittering, but the other, and 
laid it on the cover of the Book. 

" Say after me," he dictated, " I solemnly promise, 
on this Holy Book, that I will not disclose, without 
the leave of my parent or my guardian, or until I 
reach the age of twenty-one, my marriage of to-day." 

" Who is my guardian? " I asked curiously, after 
parroting the words. 

A silence fell. Lorraine looked hastily at my 
father; my father looked at me, but nobody replied. 
Some one I think it must have been Dinah 
fetched a long, deep sigh, almost a groan. 

" Here, Luke," said Ivory hurriedly. 

Luke made his promise in the same words as 
myself, but added with perfect coolness a distin- 
guishing clause of his own : 

". . . Unless some serious necessity should arise." 

"What is that for?" asked my father, a slight 
hint of dissatisfaction in his tone. 

" Let it stand," said old Ivory. u The boy's a 
good boy; I can trust him. ' Out of the mouths of 
babes and sucklings . . .' Who knows but the 
Lord may have given him a warning? " 

" There's one thing more," said father, feeling in 
his pocket; and I saw him turn very pale. He 
brought out something small and shining and handed 
it to Luke slowly, as if he were loath to part with 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 83 

it. " Keep that till it's wanted, my boy," he said, 
" and may it bring you more . . ." He broke off, 
and turned his head towards the shadows that lurked 
even in the broad daylight about the corners of the 
hall. 

" Show me," I cried, as Luke was putting it away. 
He held it out without a word; and I saw that it was 
a ring a small but heavy gold band, like the one 
that Dinah wore. 

" I don't want that," I said, " you can keep it." 

" I mean to," said Luke. There was something 
in his tone that impressed me, though I could not 
understand it. But I have known, long since, that 
in that moment Luke took up, boy that he was, the 
burden and the charge of my life. And thence- 
forward I know, I know ! he never laid it 
down. 

The feeling of tension that filled the air, and had 
begun to depress most of us, was broken in upon by 
Dinah. 

" If any one feels like they can be eating of some- 
thing," she said, in a voice thick with tears, " there's 
hot coffee and wedding cake in the kitchen, ready to 
come on. And sangwidges. Try and eat a little, 
Miss Hamilton, and you, sir, and Mr. Ivory, sir, 
and the young couple. God bless them. It's your 
duty to keep up." 

" I want my cake," I declared. 

" My lamb, you shall have it; Lord forbid I 
should grudge you anything to-day, or Mr. Luke, 
either, that's going across the salt seas, maybe never 
to come back," was Dinah's reply. Drying her 
eyes with her apron, she moved towards the kitchen. 

Lorraine, always watching my father, poured out 
a cup of strong coffee as soon as the tray came in, 
and gave it to him. A little color came into his face 



84 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

after he had drunk it. He lay back on his cushions 
silently looking at me. Busy, happy, and more 
excited than I had been at any time that day, I was 
hacking at the cake my cake with a large 
knife, and proudly distributing wedges. Father 
must have the biggest and the first. Luke helped 
next, but he passed his to Lorraine, out of politeness 
I thought. I gave him a royal wedge for himself 
after passing a share to old Ivory; but Luke looked 
at it, nibbled it, and put it down. 

"What's the matter?" I asked him, my mouth 
impolitely full. 

" Nothing, but I don't want to eat," he answered. 

It appeared that nobody did. Old Ivory left his 
share on his plate untouched; presently he got up, 
and went off into his bedroom. Lorraine civilly 
crumbled, crumbled, and tested her portion. Father 
swallowed some, but it almost seemed to choke him. 
There had been talk at first, but shortly it died down, 
and left a silence in its place a heavy silence, 
brooding like a cloud. It seemed as if every one 
were waiting for something to happen. In the 
silence the sea outside breathed hard, like a runner 
almost spent. 

Father, always courteously mannered, was begin- 
ning to fill the awkward gap by some kind of speech, 
I know not what, when a long, low call, mounting to 
a moaning wail, broke in upon his words. We 
all except father sprang to our feet. 

" The Queen of the Islands," cried Luke, and 
instantly ran to old Ivory's room. 

" She is early up to the wharf," said Lorraine, 
listening, her slight body bent towards the window 
for the second call of the great trumpet shell. It 
came, and was followed by a third. 

" England is in a hurry," said father. 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 85 

u I understand he always is. Don't get up, 
Arthur. If he comes, he won't expect . . . There's 
somebody ! " 

Her quick ears had caught the sound of an alien 
footstep crunching the coral gravel. I followed her 
out. It was not England. A sailor a sturdy 
island man, lightly bearded stood in the doorway. 

" To Ariki (the Chief) say, give this bottle, tell 
them fair wind come, he wait twenty minute, then up 
sail," said the man. I stared at him, fascinated, 
remembering those other sailors who had laughed 
and run away, the last time England's schooner 
sailed into our anchorage. I knew they must be still 
on board. I wondered if we should see them . . . 

Lorraine took the bottle. It was a fresh supply 
of medicine for my father, and wrapped round it 
was a typed paper from the doctor at Hawonga, giv- 
ing minute directions for his treatment. My aunt 
read it Quickly through and pocketed it. 

" He is kind," she said, somewhat grudgingly. 

" I think he is very, very kind, to remember all 
that for father," I told her. " Isn't he coming to 
see us, Lorraine?" 

" Evidently not. Run quickly, Dara, and tell 
Luke he must be ready to go at once. There's no 
trifling with a fair wind at this time of the year." 

Like all island dwellers, we were well versed in 
questions of weather. I knew as well as Lorraine 
that no captain could be expected to throw away a 
" slant " from the northwest towards June. 

I ran to the central hall, my short skirts flying, 
and called loudly that the ship was going in a quar- 
ter of an hour. There was no one to be seen, save 
father, lying on his long chair; but I knew that 
Luke and Ivory could not be far away. 

They were not. In another moment the door of 



86 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

Ivory's room opened, and the old man came out, 
one hand on Luke's shoulder. Luke's face was set 
as I had seen it set, on the day when he had dived 
beyond the reef, to face the unknown terror of the 
depths outside. His brows extraordinarily black 
and thick for a mere boy were drawn in one 
straight line across his forehead; his mouth made 
another straight line, narrow as a cut, so tightly 
was it closed. Somehow, I knew that if he relaxed 
that tension, even for a moment, he would cry. 
But I knew, too, that he would not relax it. 

" Good-by, Uncle Arthur," he said, using the 
friendly name that he had always given my father. 
He grasped the thin white hand that lay on the arm 
of the chair. My father took Luke's brown, young 
fingers in his, and held them. 

" Good-by," he said. " It is good-by, Luke. 
God be with you, my boy, and God deal with you as 
you deal with my little girl, when I'm " He did 
not finish. Luke wrung his hand, and left him. 

" Are you coming to the boat, Dara? " he asked 
me, looking, not in my face, but elsewhere. I think 
the boy, young as he was and unaccustomed to emo- 
tion, was near to the breaking strain, in spite of his 
brave carriage. 

" Yes, of " I was beginning .for indeed it 
seemed of course to me that I should come when, 
suddenly, most unexpectedly, a storm of weeping 
seized me. I flung my hands over my face, with the 
old wild gesture that Lorraine had so often re- 
proved. I shook from head to foot; I could not 
speak. I only cried and cried. The amazing, en- 
tertaining ceremony of the morning was over; the 
excitement of the ring and the cake were past. For 
the first time that day, I thought. And there was 
but one thought in my mind that my boy comrade, 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 87 

the partner of that strange solemnity of the morning 

Luke, the other half of my childish life was 
going away not sometime, but this moment, now. 

" Take her with you, Lorraine," said my father 
faintly. Lorraine looked at his pale face and blue- 
stained lips, saw that he could endure no further, 
and took my hand to lead me away. I broke away 
from her, and flung my arms round Luke's neck. I 
don't know what I said or did; I can only remember 
that old Ivory, kindly but determinedly, unwound my 
clinging hands, and with a brief adieu to Lorraine 

spoken for Luke, who was speechless hurried 
out with the boy through the great archway into the 
burning sun. 

I left Lorraine with my father, ran to my room, 
and shut and bolted the door. And there, weeping, 
while alone, obstinately silent when any one came to 
the door and spoke to me, I passed the remainder of 
my wedding day. 



CHAPTER VI 

DO you remember that time in your life (I know 
you have had it, for the main web of every life 
is the same) when there came a period that, in ret- 
rospection, seemed to have been like one long after- 
noon? 

There is a stir in the stillest morning; the stir, un- 
heard, perhaps, yet felt, of the mounting day; of the 
rush that carries the world to the summit of noon. 
But when the sun declines, a languor falls; the long 
still hours file by with drooping heads and nerveless, 
folded wings. Sunset is far away; the full gold of 
daylight reigns, undiminished; no breath of evening 
chill knife-edges the soft airs that float and pass. 
Yet the decline of day, the hint of change, are there; 
the moments that mounted, mounted, begin to fall. 
As middle age dims, subtly, the life and beauty of 
the human face, though death be far away, the ag- 
ing of the day pours sadness, drop by drop, into the 
beauty of the hours. And one sits and dreams, 
hands folded, and is sad, without knowing why. . . . 

The days, the weeks that came after Luke's de- 
parture were all afternoon. Something was past; 
something had not yet come. The hours were long, 
and they verged towards no happy ending. My les- 
sons had ceased; Lorraine was too much occupied 
with my father, in these days, to attend to me. She 
sat with him a great deal in the glittering coolness 
of Persephone's Hall, and they seemed to talk for 
hours; sometimes as I came in from one of my long 

88 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 89 

aimless rambles about the coral beach, or up Parnas- 
sus, I would catch a word or two as I entered, and 
it seemed that they had been disputing; sometimes 
Lorraine was sitting still and attentive, with a note- 
book on her knee and a pencil in her hand, writing 
down things that my father seemed to be telling. 
They always stopped when I came in, and my father 
always greeted me with some cheerful, joking word. 
Whatever their confidences were, it seemed clear 
that I was not to be admitted. 

One day, when I came in tired and somewhat dis- 
pirited, with a bundle of lacy-white dead coral, and 
a huge petal-lipped trumpet shell that I did not want 
at all, but had picked up out of sheer idleness, I 
saw that Dinah was just leaving the hall, and that 
old Mr. Ivory, whom I had thought to be away 
among the cocoanuts, had apparently come out not a 
moment before. Lorraine, when I entered, was roll- 
ing up a large sheet of stiff paper, and tying it round 
with tape. There were ink and pens on the table, 
and a pepper castor full of the fine sand that we used 
instead of blotting paper. 

" So you see," father was saying, " she is not de- 
pendent on him in any way; share and share alike 
is the Oh, Dara, my child, I did not know you 
were there. Well, and where has the walk been to- 
day? " 

" I went up Parnassus," I answered him. Lor- 
raine finished rolling and tying the paper. 
' The chest in your study? " she asked. 

" Yes," said father. " Thank goodness, safes 
are superfluous in this house. Another advantage 
of the cave system. Well, girlie, and what did you 
see on Parnassus? " 

" Nothing. No ships, father." 

" You can't expect ships every day, my child. 



90 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

And you know, they wouldn't bring Luke back if 
they came." 

" I know they wouldn't; I want to see some ships, 
anyhow." 

" Why? " asked father, looking at me with that 
expression of speculative interest that always silences 
a sensitive child. 

" I don't know," I said, jumping off the table, 
where I had taken my seat, and gathering my bunch 
of coral together. 

" I shall give this to Dinah; I don't want it," I 
said, marching out of the hall. I did not want 
to be questioned any further about my watch for 
ships. 

Dinah was sitting under one of the big lamps that 
burned all day in her kitchen, reading the Bible. 
She raised her eyes when I came in. 

" I stood there putrified when they told me," she 
stated. 

'Who?" 

" I felt for all the world as if a spectacle had rose 
from the tomb, and breathed cold upon my 'air. I 
said to Miss Lorraine " 

'When? What about?" 

" I said, ' Miss Lorraine,' I said, ' I am always at 
your service,' I said, ' day or night,' I said. ' I de- 
voted myself infernally to the services of Mr. Ham- 
ilton and yourself,' I said, ' when I came to these 
savage places,' I said, 'and '." 

'What did she want?" I cried impatiently. 

" She wanted," said Dinah, coming down to earth, 
" for me to sign my name, in witness whereof, the 
testator being of sound mind. And I done it." 

" Has my father been making a will? " 

" A last will and testament," said Dinah relish- 
ingly. 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 91 

" Is he worse? " I asked, my breath coming sud- 
denly short. 

Dinah staunched her eyes with a huge clean 
pocket handkerchief, and said nothing. 

" It's as ill to see you cry as to see a goose go 
barefoot," I quoted witheringly, with an ugly little 
pain at my heart. " I don't believe Dad's worse. 
He looks just the same." 

" The island," said Dinah, " has been left half 
of it to you and half of it to Mr. Luke, independent 
of each other, because the fact that come in after the 
time I was married allows of that, though in my 
coverlet, as the lawyers calls it, what was mine was 
his, and well he let me know it. Miss Lorraine, she 
told me, because, says she, there will be only you and 
me some day that knows about it, and " 

There had been no sound. There was not so 
much as a draught from the door to warn me, as 
I stood beside Dinah, back turned towards the 
kitchen entrance. But suddenly, in the midst of her 
speech, I swung round as if something or some one 
had called to me. Tall, silent, hawk-faced, self-pos- 
sessed, Captain England stood in the doorway. 

Dinah, turning to see what had disturbed me, 
sprang to her feet. 

" Lord, sir," she fluttered, with a hand on her 
stomach, where I think she supposed her heart to 
be, " you did give me a turn. Is Master Luke all 
right, sir?" 

" I left him at Port Hervey, with the steamer due 
in twelve hours," answered Captain England. 
' Where is Mr. Hamilton, if you please? " 

It seemed strange to me that he could have missed 
the Hall of Persephone, since he had already been 
shown the way to it; but I reflected that he must 
have heard our voices, and followed the sound. 



92 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

" I'll take you," I said, deserting Dinah, and lead- 
ing the way. " How did you ever come in without 
my seeing you this morning? " 

" I should suppose," said Captain England, " that 
the Queen was under the lee of the headland. Wait 
a minute, please ; I have something to bring in from 
outside." 

I waited, in the central hall, by the great sunk 
fireplace, with the tall iron dogs, where we burned 
our driftwood fires of nights. It seemed to me 
that Captain England was, to-day, another man than 
the man I had seen, once before. There was some- 
thing about him indefinitely unapproachable. . . . 

He came in from outside almost at once, carrying 
in his arms a limp, fat bundle, that exuded arms and 
legs at inappropriate points. The bundle smelt of 
whiskey, and it grunted. 

" Show me to your father," he said with perfect 
calmness. The bundle kicked. He shook it, 
slightly, as it seemed, but I could almost hear the 
bones of the creature rattle together. 

"Quit!" was all he said; a word like a bullet. 
The bundle became still. 

Led by myself, in a state of dumb amazement, he 
entered Persephone's Hall, where Lorraine and 
father were seated close together, talking earnestly. 
They broke off into I know not what exclamations. 
Harry England, carrying his bundle as lightly as a 
woman carries her baby, stepped to the table, and 
shook down on its surface a fat, bloated, red-faced 
man in a khaki suit. The man tumbled flat, and 
lay staring at the ceiling. 

" Give him a cup of black coffee, and call me as 
soon as he gets his senses back. He's the best doc- 
tor in the Hawongas, but he soaks once in a way. 
He wouldn't come with me, so I took him," ob- 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 93 

served England, in a level, well-bred voice. " Will 
you kindly excuse me? I must see to the landing of 
the cargo. I brought your usual stuff. You can 
pay me what you paid the Harkness Brothers for it. 
They're down." 

"Harkness? What has happened to them?" 
cried my father, as England was leaving. Harkness 
was an old-fashioned little firm of Port Hervey, 
which had handled our shipping business for years. 

u I fancy I have," replied England, and went 
out. 

"What does it mean?" asked father of the 
empty air. 

" I have heard," said Lorraine, putting papers 
away, " that he harasses and breaks small firms 
whenever he can, by any means, legitimate or not. 
He is ruthless when it's a question of money. He 
ought to be a rich man some day." 

" I don't much care to have that sort of " be- 
gan my father, and then his eyes fell on what I think 
we had all forgotten for the moment, the drunken 
yet, oddly, not quite disreputable, figure on the table. 
You could see, when you looked closely, that the 
man, if sober, would be a gentleman; you guessed 
that he was no fool. . . . 

Father broke off his sentence. 

" It was extraordinarily kind," he said uneasily. 

" It is the one thing I would have prayed for," 
said Lorraine, her eyes glowing like the driftwood 
flames at evening. " Arthur, we shall be able to 
give you every chance now." 

My father smiled a little, and sighed a little. I 
could not read his meaning, but Lorraine did, and 
contradicted it. 

" You are wrong, I'm sure," she said. " There's 
always hope while there's I must go and see about 



94 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

that coffee. The sooner we get him round the 
better." 

She glided away. Father and I, alone, sat look- 
ing, fascinated, at the sleeping figure on the table. 

" Captain England has been good to you, Dad," 
I said. " I will give him something. I will give 
him what can I give him, father? " 

" That is like you, little girl you are a 
true Wednesday's child, loving and giving. . . . 
Wednesday was your birthday. . . . Lorraine's was 
Friday. It seems at times almost as if there were 
something in those old . . . Well, you can give him 
one of your books, if you wish. That can harm no- 
body," he said, as if to himself. 

" He ran to get that medicine for you Oh, 
father, he ran," I said. " It made me think of my 
history lesson with Lorraine, and how they said that 
Henry the Fifth Prince Hal, you know could 
run so fast that he would take his lords with him, 
and run down a red deer by his own speed, his lords 
driving it towards him, which thing, the book said, 
no other man, king or subject, in his realm, might 
do." 

Father looked at me strangely. I think he was 
going to speak, but he said nothing. 

Some one else did, however. The drunken man 
on the table who, I think, must have been more 
confused and shaken than actually intoxicated 
suddenly opened his mouth and spoke. 

" Harry England," he said, " Harry England. 
What the devil ! Harry the Fifth. Direct line, but 
wrong side of the " 

" Hold your tongue ! " said my father, sharply 
and suddenly. 

The man on the table sat up and blinked. 

" How did I come here? " he asked. 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 95 

" You came in the Queen of the Islands," replied 
my father. " May I offer you a chair? You can 
hardly be comfortable there." 

The man sat blinking for a moment or two, and 
then, with a sudden activity that surprised me, 
nipped off the table. He was a stout fellow, with a 
disproportionately large head, and an amazingly 
thick mat of brown hair. He had an immense nose 
and an ugly mouth, and his ears projected like jug 
handles. His chin was unshaven and bristly, and 
there was a boiled-crab look about his big brown 
eyes, which nevertheless were kindly in expression. 

He made a curious clucking noise with his mouth, 
as if he were trying to taste something; pulled out 
his tongue with his fingers so that he could look at 
the tip, and felt his pulse. 

" Hocussed hocussed, and shanghaied, by 
Gad ! " he said. Then he dropped into a chair 
which he seemed to need and burst out laughing. 

" Harry England," he observed, " is the devil. 
May I ask your name? " 

" Arthur Hamilton," answered my father. 
" May I ask yours?" 

" So this is Hiliwa Dara Island? Well, well, 
well. . . . I'm Dr. Blackburn from Port Hervey; 
and very much against my will from Port Hervey, I 
can assure you. But we'll talk of that Have 
you any black coffee? " 

It was entering the room at the moment, carried 
by Lorraine. I think he must have smelt it. He 
fairly fell upon the tray, and drank the best part of 
a jugful. 

" That does me good," he sighed. " Now if one 
had just a It's you, you villain, you shanghaier, 
you kidnapper and eloper, is it? What have you to 
say for yourself? " 



96 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

England was in the room. I do not know when 
he had come in. He made no answer at all to the 
doctor, but handed him a glass with a stiff dose of 
whiskey and sparklet in it. He seemed to have had 
no difficulty in finding my father's stores. 

Blackburn drank, and lay back in his chair. We 
all saw with some astonishment, I think that 
he had accepted the situation calmly. We were 
quite as much astonished to see that Captain England 
had, seemingly, no apology to offer. We did not 
know, in those days, how far removed from any atti- 
tude of mind represented by apologies was the stuff 
of England's character. 

" I have never done anything I did not choose to 
do, or that I would have undone," he said, in years 
after, to one I knew. 

Father, I could see, was in an embarrassing posi- 
tion. He wanted to express his regrets to Dr. 
Blackburn; but he could not do so in the face of the 
man who had brought Blackburn forcibly to the 
island. He wanted to thank England, but he could 
not thank him before the shanghaied doctor. Un- 
der the circumstances, he fell back on generalities as 
his only refuge. 

" I am very glad to see you here," he said to the 
doctor. " I assure you you will not be permitted to 
lose by your visit, if it has been inconvenient to you 
to come." 

" Damned inconvenient," said Blackburn cheer- 
fully. " I depend on having my two-monthly drunk, 
and it upsets me when I don't. It's the time now, 
and I was just getting under way, when How 
long have you had it? " 

"What?" asked father in some bewilderment at 
the rapid change of subject. But Lorraine saw. 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 97 

She slipped my hand into hers, and led me, unwilling, 
away. 

" Come to my room," she said, as the door closed 
behind us. ' The doctor is going to talk to your 
father." 



Night came. The driftwood fire was lighted in 
the hall; smalt blue and celadon green the little 
flames burned up, as they had burned on every night 
of my life that I remembered. The great archway, 
when the fire died down, grew velvet-dark again. 
The sea crept up the beach, not far away, with a 
sound as of the ringing of a myriad porcelain bells. 
It always sounded like that, when there was a full 
high tide, and the drifts of tinkling coral were lifted 
and swept in. Cool airs, full of salt and weed and 
the wet-moss smell of the reef, flowed in from the 
archway; the sand, near the driftwood fire, felt 
warm to my bare feet; a few yards farther away, it 
was cold cold as I imagined that snow to be 
which I had never seen. My father was not there, 
but Lorraine and Dinah occupied their places, and 
old Ivory, on his seaweed-cushioned chair, sat work- 
ing away at fish nets, as he always did of nights. 
And the fire roared when the wind came down the 
tunnel, and in the dark outside, the mopokes called. 
It was all as it had been, all as it always would be. 
Luke was away, but he would return. Father 
would get well now that the doctor had come. 

Lying in the fire-warmed sand, my sleepy eyes on 
the flame, I felt, without words, that the world had 
come right again. And the forever-and-ever feel- 
ing of childhood, the bulwark of sand that rears it- 
self, in mimicry of solid stone, between young souls 



98 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

and the gulfs of change and Time, stood up to tip 
the stars. 

So I lay till it was my bedtime ; and the doctor did 
not come out, nor did Captain England. At last 
Lorraine beckoned to me, and reluctant, sleepy, but 
lapped in peaceful sureness of things past, present, 
and to come, I dragged my feet to the door of the 
room where the red and ivory shell lamp had 
watched above my sleeping for all the nights that 
I knew where it was never, never to watch me so 
again. And I closed the door on the great cave 
hall, filled with shadow and with firelight, and on 
the group about the fire, which had been my last 
sight every evening since first I could remember, 
but which I, and Time, were never to see there 
more. 



I cannot tell how it was that I did not wake. 
There must have been noise and movement during 
the night, and I was not, commonly, the heaviest of 
sleepers. Perhaps the excitement of the schooner 
call of all things most exciting and exhausting to 
an island dweller had tired me out. Perhaps 
some kind Fate kept finger on my eyes. Certain it 
is that I slept sound as the small green parrots slept, 
in their nests among the dark mango trees outside; 
sound as the great sea cows that snored on the lonely 
beaches at the back of the island until half the 
night was past. Then, suddenly, I woke. 

Something had called me back from the depths 
of sleep. It was no mystic voice or vision; that, had 
it come, should have come long hours before. It 
was the sound of some one crying. Not Dinah. I 
do not think that tears of Dinah's would have waked 
me from the lightest noonday doze; as I had said 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 99 

to her, " It was no sadder to see her cry than to see 
a goose go barefoot "... It was what I had never 
heard before, the voice of another woman raised in 
loud, terrible sobbing. And I knew, impossible as 
it seemed, that it could be none but Lorraine. 

I cannot account for the mood that took me. I 
never said to myself I did not even whisper to 
the depths of my soul what I knew the cry to 
mean. I got out of bed, slipped on the few clothes 
that I wore in daytime, plaited and tied back my 
hair. I tried to wash and brush my teeth, but I 
found, oddly, that I was shivering all over as if I 
were cold, and that things were slipping from my 
hands; so I dashed a little water in my face, buckled 
my belt, and slipped out. 

The cave hall was very dark indeed; not an em- 
ber showed in the sunk fireplace; not a flicker of 
foam light came through the outer arch. The sea 
was black and still, save for the low deep breathing 
that never ceases, night and day and year and cen- 
tury through, on a Pacific coast. All the doors 
about the hall were closed. I stood in the middle, 
not knowing where to go. I was not frightened 
not yet but my knees kept trying to double up 
under me like old Ivory's folding rule, and the shak- 
ing of my hands grew worse. And it seemed cold, 
in the depths of that tropic night. 

Then, as I stood there, not afraid, but strangely 
unwilling to move ( for who knew what horror might 
not leap out at me if I showed that I was there?) 
I saw a light come gradually round a corner, and 
the drunken doctor appeared, all alone, and carrying 
a hurricane lamp. He was not drunk now, but he 
looked sick and rather sad, and tired exceedingly. 
When he saw me, he gave such a jump that the sand 
spurted up about his feet. 



ioo MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

" My God! " he said, coming up to me, " it's the 
little girl." 

I looked at him, and shook more than ever, and I 
could not say a word. 

. . . Blackburn is dead. He died not long after, 
a shameful death, and his memory, in the island 
world, has no sweet savor. But I shall always re- 
member him with kindness; if I were one of those 
who pray for the dead, I am sure I should pray for 
him. 

He had had a wife, once, and children, years ago. 
He had not forgotten how to deal with a frightened 
child. He set down his lamp, put his warm arm 
round my small, shivering body, and drew me to him. 

'The poor wee lassie," he said; and again, 
" The poor wee lassie." And in those words he 
told me all. 

The shriek that I sent up tore the roof. 

" Father! " I screamed; and even while the name 
left my lips, knew, with the stabbing knowledge that 
comes to us in these awful moments, that I should 
never say that word again, save as a meaningless cry. 
There was no longer any such name for me. There 
was no such thing as father in the empty world. 

Behind the closed door of Lorraine's bedroom, 
her monotonous sobbing, that had waked me up, be- 
gan again. And for the first time in all my life, 
when I flung myself screaming on the ground, in a 
fit of the hysterical abandonment that had hitherto 
been the crime of crimes, no one rebuked me or in- 
terfered. The drunken doctor, who was so sober 
now, stood beside me, lantern set in the sand, and 
just waited. Through all my wild passion, I could 
feel his steady, kindly eyes fixed on me waiting. 

They did their work at last. I sat up, and stared 
about me, shivering and sick. 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 101 

" Everything was done for him that could be 
done. He did not wish you called," said Black- 
burn, slowly and gently. " He went easily, and 
didn't suffer a bit." (It was years before I recog- 
nized the kindly lie that he had told.) " You don't 
want to see him." I realized that I did not I 
trembled at the thought. " You are going to join 
your aunt, and stay with her till morning Not 
your aunt? Then Dinah. She has finished. . . . 
She is somewhere about; I'll find her." 

He did. In a minute or two, strong hands lifted 
me from the ground and carried me away, and until 
dawn the loyal servant woman and I wept in each 
other's arms. But Lorraine, locked in with her 
grief, saw and spoke to no one. 

With daylight came Harry England, and a new 
sorrow. 

Those who have lived in the island world will un- 
derstand readily the necessity that now fell upon 
us of putting aside our grief, of taking up the or- 
dinary work of daylight, and acting as if no disaster 
had fallen in the night upon Hiliwa Dara. They 
know what it means in the " schooner islands " to 
have a ship ready and waiting, and no prospect of 
another for months to come. It had long been ar- 
ranged between my father and Lorraine that she 
was to take me to the Hawongas as soon as the in- 
evitable end had come, Dinah remaining on for a 
little while to see to the comforts of old Ivory 
who, though I have not mentioned it, was daily 
showing more and more the signs of his great age. 
And now the end had come indeed, suddenly, as all 
but myself had known it would, but lightened, at 
least, by everything that science could do. And the 
opportunity of reaching the Hawongas was here, but 
it would not stay. England declared that it had 



102 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

already cost him a good deal to come out of his 
usual way so far, and that he could not promise to 
stay over another tide. If Lorraine and I were to 
take passage with him for Port Hervey, we must be 
ready by sundown. There was no valid reason why 
this should not be. In the island world, with its 
fierce heats and torrential rains, no corpse is kept 
above ground longer than a few hours necessary for 
the preparing of the grave. Our packing was light, 
and there were two women to do it. The convent 
school in Port Hervey was ready to take me at any 
time. There could be no dispute about the matter; 
Lorraine and I must go. 

I went through the day in a dream; in one of 
those dreadful dreams that we pray to wake from, 
when they find us in the world of sleep; that we 
struggle against, and try to believe dreams indeed, 
when they darken the sunlight of our real, living 
days. Lorraine, cruelly as I thought then, kindly, 
I realize now, made me help with the packing and 
sorting of my clothes. She herself worked without 
tears, without rest, almost without speech. She 
had had her terrible hour, and put her sorrow, for 
the moment, out of sight. I have never it may 
have been my fault have never loved Lorraine, 
but I cannot deny her courage, so high, so certain, 
so far, always, beyond mine. . . . 

In the afternoon, when all the work was done, 
a hush fell suddenly upon the cave house of Hiliwa 
Dara, and old Ivory, who had been away all morn- 
ing in the carpenter's shop, returned. He carried 
something into my father's room; he was followed 
by two or three of our plantation boys. Later, the 
boys came out, a long black-covered burden in their 
arms; and I clung to Dinah, who was kneeling in the 
sand, and cried and cried again. She loosed my 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 103 

hands presently, and, with Lorraine, went out after 
the black burden into the cruel sunlight. But the 
drunken doctor smelling now of the whiskey that 
was kept on the guests' shelf in Persephone's Hall 
stayed with me, and said never a word, but let 
me cry all I would. . . . 

There was no formal meal that night. Dinah, in 
her element now, if never before, went round from 
one person to another carrying trays of sandwiches, 
coffee, soup, pieces of hot pie Heaven knows how 
she found the time to make it and begging every 
one to eat and drink and " keep up." She even ad- 
ministered Bovril to Harry England, with a tender 
hand, as if he had been overcome with grief for the 
man he had seen but twice, and asked him if he 
could fancy anything solid to eat. . . . 

" A plate of beef, if you please, and a bottle of 
beer," was his answer. I do not know how he knew 
we had beef; it is not a matter of course, in any 
island dwelling. As it happened, Ivory had killed, 
a day before. 

" I shall have to run the ship to-night," he added; 
it was as near an apology as anything one ever heard 
him say. 

Dinah brought the food and set it on a stool; 
she seemed resolved to lay no tables that night. 
Often since then, it has come to my mind that she 
acted with purpose, and with the kindliest of 
thoughts. What a " last meal " at Hiliwa Dara 
would have been to Lorraine and to me, I scarcely 
dare to think. She saved us from it. 

The drunken doctor, getting more and more un- 
certain in his words and actions, but always thought- 
ful for me, sat near me, and persuaded me to eat. 

" 'S long way to go," he warned me. " Thash 
a big win' gettin' up. All right with Harry Eng- 



104 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

land take his ship anywhere, any sht sht 
shtorm. But iss' long way. You eat something." 

England finished his meal quickly; he never 
seemed to take any especial pleasure in food, even 
when, as now, he had fasted for the best part of 
twenty- four hours. 

" Are you ready? " he said to Lorraine. She 
bowed in reply. I have no doubt she found it diffi- 
cult to speak. It was quite dark now, and the plan- 
tation boys were waiting at the archway to carry our 
goods away. Old Ivory how much aged, in this 
one day and night came, stooping, from an inner 
room, and began to give orders. 

" Good-by, my lamb," sobbed Dinah. " Please 
Heaven, we'll meet again; and be sure, Miss Dara, 
to put dry clothes on when you get wet, and don't 
neglect your vittles, my lamb, for you're getting as 
thin as a beadle-nut tree, so take care of yourself, 
and let me see you quite infatuated when I come to 
you and Miss Lorraine." 

The wind had indeed been rising; it blew hard in 
my face as Lorraine and I went down the walk to- 
gether; the stars were gone, and the newly risen 
moon raced hard for her life through wolf packs of 
pursuing cloud. 

" Thank God it's dark," said Lorraine, drawing 
her cloak close round her. " To leave in the day- 
light "... She shuddered; and not with cold. 

Beyond the jetty, rocking wildly on the swells that 
burst over the reef, lay at anchor the Queen of the 
Islands. Her riding lamps made zigzag light- 
nings in the water; she pulled at her cables like a 
furious horse at his halter. Now and again her 
stern rose and fell, with a sound like a giant throw- 
ing colossal buckets of water on a marble floor. 

The smell of copra, oily and nutty, and charged, 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 105 

to us islanders, with the very spirit of ships and sea, 
blew from the hold as our whaleboat shoved off. 
For a moment my spirits rose ; for a moment, I for- 
got that father was lying, alone, underneath the 
palms, and remembered only that I had longed 
above everything to see the Queen of the Islands, 
dreamed, as one dreams impossible things, of travel- 
ing somewhere in the wonderful, wicked ship. . . . 
Then the cloud came down again, and I climbed the 
Jacob's ladder in a trance of tired misery, only half 
understanding what I saw and heard. I remember 
that we went across a heaving deck (well was it for 
us that we were island bred, and accustomed to the 
violent ways of cutters and ketches) down a com- 
panion, and into a white saloon with swinging lamps. 
An island, youth, dressed in the royal blue jumper 
and loin cloth that were England's uniform, showed 
us a little cabin with a berth and a cushioned locker. 
Almost before we had time to realize our surround- 
ings, the loud song of the anchor chains burst forth, 
and all the ship was filled with their roaring chorus, 
and with the cries of the brown man who ran the 
winches round. The great sails rose with thunder- 
ous slatting of canvas. Suddenly the clamor died, 
the ship leaned over over as if she would 
swing her lee rail underneath; chatter, chatter went 
the sea along her side, under the bulkhead of our 
cabin. A new, cold air blew in from the saloon 
doorway. We were away; and the life at Hiliwa 
Dara had ended. 

It was a terrible night. Captain England had 
known it would be; for that reason, and not on ac- 
count of the tides, he had hurried us away, wishing 
to get through the dangerous bars of reef that sur- 
rounded the island before the worst of the storm 



io6 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

should break. Once we were out from under the 
lee of Hiliwa Dara and swept by those huge 
wings, and by the fierce will of our captain, we 
cleared the land all too soon our ship fell into 
the maw of the ravening seas, like a butterfly seized 
by a shark. Less chance than the butterfly she 
seemed to have, through the first hours of the storm. 
It blew half a hurricane that night. 

Hour after hour, clinging, tossed and bruised, to 
the seats of the cabin, we heard the seas bursting 
on the deck above, with a sound as if a thousand 
carts of paving stones had been cast down; we felt 
the wild leaping and staggering of the ship, driven 
by the hounds of the storm. Long since, the 
hatches had been closed and the outer air cut off; 
we stifled in our little cabin. Lorraine and I crept 
out, at last, clawing and holding on, into the saloon; 
at least, there was air to breathe there. . . . 

I think the storm must have gone down a little 
about then; it was morning, but we did not know, 
for the deadlights were screwed home, and the 
cover was on the skylight. The noise was still ap- 
palling; we did not hear the sound of the companion 
hatch, quickly opened and closed by England. It 
was not until we saw his tall figure bending swiftly 
down to come in, against a background of pale, an- 
gry dawn, that we knew the day had come. 

He shut the hatch again, shutting out with it the 
sudden increase of sea thunder that had followed 
him in. The dark steward in the royal blue jumper 
and loin cloth popped up like a demon in a panto- 
mime out of the lazaretto; he had come from the 
galley by a door reserved for bad weather. He 
brought the coffee, which on every ship is served at 
six o'clock. England drank his, standing; he seemed 
as much at home on the reeling floor as if he had 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 107 

been the center of the world; the one firm point 
round which all chaos circled. Lorraine and I, 
wedged into corners with pillows, snatched and 
saved and sipped, and spilled half our cupfuls about 
the settees. 

" Rather a dirty night," said England, " but 
things are quieting down; we've run across the tail 
end of it, about. I can take you on deck now if 
you like." 

Lorraine refused; she said she would rather try to 
sleep and she did not think she could stand, in any 
case. 

" Dara will come; I'll carry her," pronounced the 
captain; and I would as soon have thought of ob- 
jecting as of leaping into the fierce seas that beat 
outside, though in truth, I had rather by far have 
stayed down in the cabin with Lorraine. 

He took a coat from a nail where it had been 
swinging furiously all night, wrapped it round me, 
and brought me out, carrying me in the bend of one 
elbow as if I had been a kitten. I clung to him 
when the cold gale struck my cheek; it seemed as if 
the whole world, outside there, was reeling and danc- 
ing, almost standing on its head. His face, sea- 
beaten to brown leather, lean, lit by dark, sparkling 
eyes under eyebrows like strips of black fur, touched 
mine as the ship made a furious leap. 

" Oh, you are as hard as wood! " I cried, aston- 
ished. 

" As hard as harder things than that," said Harry 
England, dropping me into the nest he had prepared 
a chair lashed tight to the deckhouse. He se- 
cured a bit of Manila rope across me as I sat. His 
hands were wonderfully capable and gentle. 

"Did you ever kill a man?" I broke forth. I 
had heard strange things about this sailor, from folk 



io8 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

on passing ships; and my nerves were too completely 
relaxed by the wild night for any of the ordinary 
restraints of " manners " to control my speech. 

" I should do so, if I had to," said Harry Eng- 
land which, when one came to think of it, was 
no answer at all. " I do what I have to. I have 
to make you comfortable now. A pillow put 
your head back. Now you are to sleep in the fresh 
air. Don't let me find you with your eyes open until 
eight bells." 

I was so much in awe of him that I closed my 
eyes at once, and only ventured to peep beneath my 
eyelashes, later on, when I heard his voice Eng- 
land had an amazing voice; I do not think that he 
had ever sung a note, but it had all the compass and 
power of the greatest singing voices calling out 
an order at the far end of the ship. 

He was standing in the bows, rising and falling 
fearfully with the ship's motion, and looking up at 
some one on the foremast. I followed his glance, 
and saw a sailor, barefooted, trousered, clinging to 
a yard that was so high up it looked like a walking 
stick. The sailor had something like a long dark 
rope flying loose behind. I realized that it she 
was one of Harry England's famous women 
A.B's. 

" She is coming down," I said to myself excitedly. 
She was. 

Lightly as a cat indeed, no cat could have fol- 
lowed where she clung she slid down a stay, 
caught the shrouds, backed swiftly, leaped to the 
deck. Another girl so like herself as to look al- 
most a sister, followed her. They were handsome 
creatures, pale brown in color, with the immense 
dark eyes of the Polynesian girl, and the long rich 
hair that one finds nowhere west of Samoa. They 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 109 

had full figures, clearly outlined beneath their thin 
cotton shirts, and one could see the swell of the arm 
muscles, displayed by the rolled-up sleeves, and the 
hard calf and thigh, under the trousers, strong as a 
man's, yet graceful as a woman's. I have never 
seen two more splendid human beings. 

Other sailors were busy about the decks, clear- 
ing up the damage caused by the half hurricane of 
the night; but I had eyes for none of them, I was 
fascinated by the island girls. One of them came 
over to me, on her way to belay a length of rope, 
and laughed at me as I sat tied in my chair. She 
said something in island Maori the common lan- 
guage of the Pacific about the " Pretty little white 
girl." 

The captain launched a blast of orders at her, 
couched, not in island Maori, but some local dialect 
which I did not understand. She made a face, and 
moved on, and I, literally trembling lest he should 
find out that I had opened my eyes, after all, closed 
them again so tight, that, being tired, I slept. 

When I woke, the sun was high up in the heavens, 
the sea was almost calm, and far away on the hori- 
zon, distant yet a full day's sailing, afloat like pale 
blue clouds, I saw the peaks of distant mountains 
the unknown hills of Hawonga. 



CHAPTER VII 

HAWONGA is a Love Island. 
There are a good many such islands in the 
South Seas, though, naturally, they are not marked 
as such on the map. A Love Island is a place where 
nobody has much to do; where the climate is ener- 
vating and soft, the soil fertile, and the natives, 
men and women, very good to look at. In such an 
island, the chief occupation of every one, white, 
brown, and half-caste, is love-making. People keep 
stores, keep hotels, go trading about the coasts, grow 
fruit for market, and dry copra once in a way, but 
these things are not their interest in life, their rea- 
son for continuing to live. That is to be found in 
the dances that fill up half the nights; in the picnic 
parties that pass continually, whaleboat carried, up 
and down the ever placid waters of the lagoons; in 
the hot afternoons when stores are shut, and hotels 
left to run themselves, and every one under forty 
years of age goes off to sit beneath a fern-shaded 
waterfall, side by side with her, or him, or more fre- 
quently, with them. ... If the waterfall is small, 
you, and she, and they, go and sit where it can run, 
deliciously, down a sun-scorched back, for an hour or 
so at a time. If it is large, you tie a " pareo " about 
you, let down your hair (supposing that you are one 
of the many island beauties, tea-colored, coffee-col- 
ored, or perhaps merely color of cream) wreathe 
your head with ropes of white, scented flowers, and, 
shrieking with joy and fear, leap over the rail. And 
when the sunset comes, you being a trader or store- 
no 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART in 

keeper or official may, perhaps, wander home, arm 
in arm with the cream-colored girl who has your 
heart and your credit at the store; or you may build 
a fire in a pit of stones, and, with her and her 
friends, cook your evening meal beneath the stars, 
and afterwards join in the wild island dances that 
Cook and his sailors saw, and Bligh of the 
" Bounty " forbade his men to join in, lest they 
should do that which indeed they did, eat of the 
lotus fruit, and never wish to leave the islands any 
more. And you will sleep where you fall, under- 
neath the stars and the star-shaped shadows of the 
palms. And next day, because the store or the plan- 
tation, or the hotel seems a weariness to you, you 
will not go back to it, but will make a forest picnic 
away to the place where the wild " fei " fruit and 
the oranges are ripe, and seven other men as young 
and good to see as you yourself, and seven and 
twenty island girls who never have anything at all to 
do will go too, and there will be singing and dancing, 
and sharing of wild doves, the which must be done, 
according to immemorial custom, by twos and twos; 
and nobody at all will go home, or go to work, until 
they feel the forest, and the fei, and the snaring of 
the wild turtledoves by the tame ones have, for 
the time, grown wearisome. So back to the sleepy 
town. . . . 

Hardly need I say that this was not my view of 
Hawonga, nor my part in it. I lived in a little, 
pretty house on the main street a house with 
plaited bamboo walls, and deep thatched roof, and 
a flood of bougainvillaea tossing wine-red waves of 
flowers all over the surrounding fences. Lorraine 
lived there too; and Dinah released from Hiliwa 
Dara Island by the death of old Ivory, which took 
place soon after Lorraine and I went away lived 



ii2 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

with us, as cook, nurse, housekeeper, ladies' maid, 
and chaperon. 

The convent school, one of the best in the whole 
Pacific, which was no doubt my father's reason for 
selecting the Hawongas stood a little way down 
the street, under an arcade of scarlet-flowered poin- 
ciana trees. A pathway of white coral led to the 
door. Morning after morning, in the years that 
came after Hiliwa Dara days, I trod that pathway 
in my pretty white frocks and dainty shoes (for I 
was always well dressed, as became the little heiress 
of Hiliwa Dara) , a native girl following behind me, 
to carry my books and music, Dinah following last 
of all, to see that nobody spoke to me or annoyed 
me, and that the native girl was not, as she put it, 
up to any of her tricks. . . . Dinah's opinion of the 
natives of this Love Island, one and all, went almost 
beyond expression, and was mostly confined to head- 
shakings and turning up of eyes. Occasionally she 
burst forth, as on one memorable Sunday, when she 
was escorting me to the little Anglican mission 
church, and met, tearing through the town full blast 
like the very rout of Pan, a horseback picnic of 
nymphs who had only too clearly been bathing, and 
had not stopped to dress at least, not enough to 
satisfy the Puritan conscience of my maid. 

" This town," she said, " is running over with im- 
mortality, and if fire and grindstones don't come 
down from heaven to destroy them, then I don't be- 
lieve there never was any cities of the plain. I ex- 
pect Port Hervey is worse than any of them, any- 
how, because if plain people could be carrying on to 
that extent, much more so, Miss Dara, people that 
their Creator has made as wickedly good looking as 
them hussies. Don't you ever forget that beauty is 
a deceitful and dangerous thing in case you should 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 113 

grow up good looking," she added carefully, with 
a view to the mortifying of youthful vanity. 

Of course I knew, even at fourteen, that I was 
pretty. I could scarcely have missed knowing it, in 
the Hawongas, though I spent most of my day in 
the convent, where the pale shadowy Sisters lec- 
tured me and the other white pupils (kept rigidly 
apart from " colored " girls), on modesty, humility, 
and other gentle virtues that could not be expected to 
spring up, unaided, in the enervating atmosphere of 
these southern lotus lands. If Dinah guarded me 
like a dragon, as she did, on the walk to school and 
back; if Lorraine sifted my acquaintance, and re- 
sifted it, till I was scarcely allowed to attend a chil- 
dren's party at the Residency; if showiness was 
strictly discouraged in the good, expensive clothes I 
wore, and ornaments forbidden, though I had more 
jewelry of my own than any young girl on the 
island still, Nature found ways to whisper in my 
ear the secret that every fair woman in the making 
knows. Dinah and Lorraine could put no embargo 
upon glances; they could not prevent my exulting 
in the fact that no young girl at the Residency par- 
ties ever got a partner until my card was filled; they 
could not stop enamored lads from flinging choco- 
lates in at my window, when every one was busy at 
the other side of the house, or stifle the low, soft 
singing of island songs, that sounded sometimes, of 
dark, starry nights, when road and fence and garden 
were veiled by the kindly dusk that comes so swiftly 
and so happily for lovers, in these Isles of Love. 

So it came that I did not pay quite so much atten- 
tion to my books as the good Sisters would have 
wished, and that after a while, as I began to grow up 
in earnest, and found myself, all of a sudden, a real 
young woman of sixteen, with hair up and frocks 



ii 4 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

down, I spent much time at the looking-glass, and 
more still with the shelf of standard poets that hung 
in Lorraine's own room, and that she could not well 
deny me, since they were her own favorite reading. 
Lorraine, I fancy, had narrowly missed attaining to 
the laurel crown that my father longed for, yet knew 
far out of reach. I have some fragments of her 
poetry, to-day, that might well have brought her 
fame had they been smoothed down to the per- 
fection they were capable of, or even finished. 

She read almost nothing but poetry. But with 
her, it was an avenue to the past. With me, it was 
a golden, flower-strewn, mysterious road, leading I 
knew not whither. I lived on " Romeo and Juliet " 
for months. I acted it to myself, late in my own 
room. I mused on the strange similarity of fates, 
both married as mere children only I, I reflected 
proudly, had beaten Juliet by two years. . . . 

Another year went by. No one knew of the cere- 
mony, now five years old, in the cave house of Hil- 
iwa Dara. No one ever spoke to me of it. Lorraine, 
I sensed, somehow, to be inexplicably hostile to it in 
her secret mind. Dinah I knew afterwards 
had promised old Ivory that she would not talk to 
me about the matter; and a promise made to a dy- 
ing man was, in her estimation, so sacred that one 
could not even mention it, other than by head-shak- 
ings and signs. 

During these years, I had heard constantly and 
regularly from Luke. He wrote from his school to 
tell me of his boyish successes in class, in cricket and 
football, in the great national sport of Australia, 
swimming. He wrote, also, with candor, of the 
scrapes he got into from time to time, which inter- 
ested me much more, as they seemed to bring the 
once ever-perfect Luke nearer to my unsatisfactory 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 115 

self. When Ivory died, the guardianship of the boy 
and his property was passed on, by previous arrange- 
ment, to the headmaster of the school who, I think, 
understood Luke's peculiar nature somewhat better 
than his own relations had done, since he gave the 
lad an amazing amount of freedom and left him, at 
eighteen, practically his own guardian, with a large 
allowance, and perfect liberty to choose his own way 
of life. 

Luke chose to go to an agricultural college. Hil- 
iwa Dara was doing well, under its paid manager, 
but he was certain, he told me, that he could make 
it do definitely better by and by; he hinted mysteri- 
ously at wonderful possibilities, suspected by no 
one but himself. He meant to take a year at the 
college, he told me, and afterwards another year 
at a School of Mines. Then, he said, he would be 
twenty, and I should be eighteen, and we might 
make our home on Hiliwa Dara Island together. 
He sent me, with the letter, a beautiful set of aqua- 
marines brooch, necklet, bracelet, ring, and 
screw-on earrings. It was the first time that he had 
referred, openly, to the bond existing between us; 
and he spoke of it more as if it were an ordinary en- 
gagement than anything else. This was due had 
I known it to a certain delicate consideration for 
my feelings; but I took it otherwise. I was past the 
romantic Romeo and Juliet stage, when I had gazed 
on his photograph, and addressed speeches to it in 
the moonlight. I had come to think of men 
white men, young men as rather silly creatures, 
who were always wanting to make love to one, and 
to send one presents which Lorraine would never let 
one accept. I was, in my own opinion, exceedingly 
grown up, and full of hard common sense of 
which, I think, I had in reality no more than a sea 



u6 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

anemone has feathers. Nobody, so far as I could 
hear, had ever been married at twelve years of age; 
the very youngest bride that the islands had known 
was sixteen when she went to the altar. I had once, 
tentatively, asked her if she could have been mar- 
ried younger, and she said certainly not; nobody 
could be married younger than sixteen; there were 
laws against it. When I asked her what they were, 
she shook her head patronizingly (it was only six 
weeks since she had coiled her schoolgirl pigtail into 
a knot on the nape of her neck) and said that they 
were laws meant for people's protection, so that no- 
body could run away with you ; that was all she knew 
about it, but was certain they were true, for her hus- 
band was a lawyer, and he had had a case about 
something of the sort. 

Not quite satisfied, I tried yet again. I asked an- 
other married woman an old one this time if 
she had ever heard of any girl being married at 
twelve; and cited the cases of Mrs. Edgar Allan 
Poe, thirteen; Mrs. Mayne Reid, thirteen also, and 
(Heaven save me !) Juliet, fourteen, as all the world 
knew. 

The old lady laughed. 

" Those were Americans " she said; " if it ever 
happened and American marriages aren't like 
any others; they make them and break them for 
fun. . . . And Juliet, you know, my dear, was just 
made up by Shakespeare. Nobody marries at those 
absurd ages but natives." 

She could not have said anything that would have 
mortified me more ; I had to the full the racial pride 
of the white girl reared among colored people. I 
made up my mind that the whole thing had been a 
freak of father's and Mr. Ivory's. I wore Luke's 
jewels Lorraine, who was always just, however 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 117 

strict she might be, permitted me, somewhat 
grudgingly, to put them on occasionally but I 
regarded them much a,s I regarded the boxes of choc- 
olates that used to be thrown through my window, 
and the other, more valuable gifts that the Resi- 
dent's own sons, the lads from the Mission House, 
and a stray middy or two had offered me from time 
to time, only to meet with refusal. Luke was en- 
gaged to me that made the difference. Nothing 
more. 

So I put the jewels on, in their flashing beauty, 
green and blue above my dress of the changeable 
blue and green silk that I still loved as a foil to my 
copper hair; and I laced myself in, and powdered 
myself up, and made myself look as pretty as I knew 
how, for the night of a certain Residency ball. It 
was to be a great night of special festivity; for the 
war was over, and the soldiers were coming home. 

Not the war that rises to your mind no. It 
was another that came and passed, it may be, before 
you who read this were born. ... It had seemed 
a great event to us, who lived in the far parts of 
the earth. We had read our newspapers with 
sharper hunger than usual, during those years of 
fighting away at the other side of the world. We 
had felt that mighty happenings were afoot. Some 
of our few white men had gone a beach comber 
or so, gaining sudden glory and praise from a popu- 
lace that had hitherto been coolly disapproving; a 
brace of Government officials; a planter, a store 
assistant and one more, Harry England. 

He had been the first to go, while others were de- 
bating, protesting, explaining, asking advice. Eng- 
land so soon as the cables began to tell their 
story of a Britain too hard pressed had, without 
discussion or remark, turned the head of his ship 



ii8 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

from the port whither she was going, and sailed her 
straight down to Sydney. There he enlisted in an 
Australian Volunteer force, and laid up the Queen 
of the Islands against his return, or his death. 
Those who saw him leave the Queen saw also a 
strange sight. England, the hardest head and the 
boldest heart, so it was said, in the whole Pacific, 
walking down the gangway of the schooner with 
tears upon his face. There are some in the islands 
to-day who doubt if he, the lover of many women, 
loved ever one of them as he loved his white-winged 
Queen. 

For three years, the Hawongas knew Harry Eng- 
land no more. Then the cables flashed the news of 
victory to Australia and New Zealand; and slowly, 
weeks after, steamers brought the news to Port 
Hervey. Now, but a few weeks later, those whom 
the war had spared were coming home. The two 
beach combers were dead. The Government of- 
ficials had gone into another service. The planter 
had a lame foot and an injured eye. The store- 
keeper was suffering from after effects of enteric. 
Harry England was not dead; he had been wounded, 
but suffered no ill effects; he had not deserted the 
Pacific; and he was coming home. He had the 
D. S. O. in a time when the D. S. O.'s were a 
distinction for a feat of such daring valor that it 
would undoubtedly have gained the Victoria Cross, 
had it not been performed in open defiance to order. 
He was three years older, two and thirty now, and I, 
who had seen him but once or twice since the voyage 
from Hiliwa Dara, who had been but fourteen when 
he left, was seventeen now, and a woman. 

And it was a dance night, and I was going, and he 
was to be there. ... I suppose I have known thou- 
sands of tropic nights as lovely as that night must 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 119 

have been, but I cannot recall one that does not, in 
recollection, pale before it. We walked to the 
dance, Lorraine and I, after the simple fashion of 
the islands. The moon was up, in a warm violet 
sky; the palm-tree crowns, black velvet underneath, 
bright silver above, stood moveless in a mighty sea 
of stars. All the giant leaves of the bananas were 
frosted with moon and dew. Some red hibiscus 
flowers, like immense carnations, had fallen in the 
pale dust of the roadway; the moon was so bright 
that we could see their vivid color. A long way off, 
across the harbor, peaks of the distant islands stood 
up; they were not shadowy, but clear, and of a won- 
derful fairy blue. I remember every moment of 
that walk. I remember how my small, high satin 
heels sank into the soft dust, and how the long 
strings of mammee-apple flowers, ivory colored in 
the moonlight, smelt very sweet and cold, and shook 
one's heart. ... So many things, that night, shook 
my heart, that was already dancing and shaking un- 
der my sea-blue colored dress the color that some 
one once had praised. . . . The coral reef, far out, 
kept up the nameless sound that island folk call sing- 
ing, sighing, murmuring, yet that is none of the 
three; it seemed to call to me so that I could have 
gathered up my silks and thrown my little dancing 
shoes away, and run out, alone, through the moon- 
light into its tossing arms. And the reef, and the 
moon, and the mammee-apple flowers, all, in their 
calling, and their perfume, and their light, seemed 
to have something nameless something that held 
my heart as if with hands something that lived in 
long, dark, ruthless eyes. . . . 

Lorraine walked silently beside me; she, too, felt 
the beauty of the night, perhaps even more than I 
did. She was like the night herself, all dark and 



120 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

starry. Her dress was gauzy black, covered with 
silver sequins that flashed and scintillated with every 
movement; she had silver sequined slippers, and in 
her hair was a band of silver, set with one or two 
good diamonds. Lorraine dressed well always, in 
her own somber way; she had an independent for- 
tune, the settlement of the marriage that was never 
made, given over to her by her dead lover's people. 
I knew her, now, to be thirty-five; it seemed to me 
an appalling age. She should, in my youthful opin- 
ion, have been wearing caps and cross-over shawls, 
and giving herself to good works . . . instead of 
which, she was walking by my side to the Residency 
dance, dressed for dancing, and looking absurdly 
young, and really handsome. ... I could not but 
feel that it was rather indecent of Lorraine. How- 
ever, I put up with it, silently, as one has to put up 
with so many foolish and mortifying freaks of the 
aged at seventeen. 

We had never much to say to each other when 
alone. I trod on in the silent dust silently, thinking 
of the steamer that lay down below us in the shel- 
tered bay, and of the three soldiers who had come 
back in her from the war. The lights of the Resi- 
dency burst upon us at a turn of the roadway; they 
were twice as many as usual half the kerosene 
lamps in Port Hervey had evidently been borrowed 
by the Resident to make up this brave show. Danc- 
ing had not begun yet, but on the broad verandas 
where the dance was to take place, and where huge 
palm leaves, tied to the pillars, fluttered faintly 
in the breeze that swept the hill, complaining 
notes of violins being tuned sounded down to the 
road. 

" Oh, they are beginning they are beginning! " 
I cried. Heedless of chaperons I picked up my pre- 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 121 

cious skirts, and, on the pointed toes of my sea-blue 
slippers, ran. 

I reached the top of the hill not at all winded, for 
I was so slight, and as active as a squirrel. Ma- 
belle, the Resident's daughter, met me on the steps. 
She was a pretty girl, and a special friend of mine. 

" How do you like my red dress ! Did you see 
the Queen? Oh, have you seen him? " 

" Yes, very much. I saw her on the road; she's 
coming in a buggy; she's got her crown on, and the 
pet turtle with her. Who do you mean? Are the 
soldiers " 

" Yes, but I don't I mean oh, there's the 
Queen; I don't think dad will like her wearing her 
crown; it's rather cheek, isn't it, since we took over 
from the British?" 

Mabelle, like all Residents' and Governors' 
daughters, was very keen on the subject of her 
father's prestige. 

" She'll hear you," I warned, as Queen Lalua, 
six feet high, incredibly fat, dressed in a kind 
of nightdress of orange satin, carrying a small, im- 
passive turtle under her arm, and wearing a silver- 
gilt crown with paste jewels, went up the steps. 

" Do her good," said Mabelle severely. " When 
it was a Crown Colony of course the English let her 
do anything she liked, because they were so far away, 
and anyhow they always do but now that New 
Zealand has been sitting on the place for nearly five 
years, these queens and people ought to know 
their " 

I put my fingers in my ears. 

" If you're going to talk politics," I cried, " talk 
them alone; don't you want any partners? " 

Mabelle pulled my fingers out. 

" I haven't told you about him," she said, in a 



122 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

half whisper. " He's a mysterious stranger; some- 
body brought him from the steamer, and oh, my 
dear, he is so handsome that " She was hurrying 
with me to the dancing veranda. " He will have 
his card filled up," she panted, forgetting all about 
Lalua and her iniquities. " He dances divinely, I 
feel it in my bones." She pushed past a group of 
native princes and princesses, dressed in silk shirts 
and tunics, and in magnificent flowing nightdress 
robes of furniture velvet, trimmed with gold lace. 
" There," she said, laying one hand she had 
pretty hands on her fluttering heart. " There he 
is. They have just come; the steamer was late, 
and they came right up from her gangway. Cap- 
tain England is with dad in his den. That's no- 
body the storekeeper there's the man I mean 
he's just turning round now look ! " 

I looked. 

I saw a youth of twenty-one or two, wearing a 
dress suit of remarkably good cut the only one 
on the veranda, save the Resident's. He was a 
dark-haired fellow, with an amazingly tanned face, 
in which were set two blue eyes like blue stones. 
He was slightly above middle height, and had a cer- 
tain active and capable air about him, as if he were 
accustomed to use his muscles; I connected it, 
vaguely, with the deep tan of his face and yet 
there was something about his cool, repressed look 
that rather suggested the student. . . . An odd 
combination odd as the tan and the light, bright 
eyes; as the excellent dress suit (" it does show off 
a man with a real waist," whispered Mabelle) and 
the hands, which were well kept, but burned almost 
to blackness. 

On the whole, the newcomer intrigued me some- 
what, especially as I felt almost certain though 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 123 

not quite that I had seen him somewhere before. 
I was just opening my lips to say so, when Mabelle, 
who had been staring with unconcealed delight, sud- 
denly seized my arm. 

" Oh, oh, look! " she whispered. And I saw that 
the dark-haired fellow with the strange blue eyes 
was walking right up to Lorraine, and holding out 
his hand. 

" He knows her! " I exclaimed. I saw him speak 
to her, and then turn round to look about the ve- 
randa. Mabelle was standing right in front of me; 
and she was taller and broader than I, and I was 
half-veiled, besides, by a palm-screened pillar. I 
do not think I could have been visible to him. But, 
unlike Mabelle, I had no interest in knowing whether 
I was or not. Quite half my mind had been occu- 
pied, up to this, with another thought; and now, on 
a sudden, it overflowed, like a still, glassy dam that 
has been rising higher and higher, unseen, behind 
its embankment, and, all in a minute, rushes down- 
ward in a flood. . . . 

The curtained doorway of the Resident's room 
(it had never been out of my mind, while we were 
talking) opened wide; the curtains shook and 
parted, and out came a tall, very tall figure in stained 
uniform of khaki. . . . 

I felt something stop. I did not know whether it 
was the world, or just my heart it might have 
been either, by the feeling. ... I wonder how near 
we are to death, sometimes, in these moments that 
come and pass like the rush of a shooting star? 
Nearer than we think, it may be does not Nature, 
the " wise nurse," make them swift, and very 
rare? . . . 

The world or was it my heart? went on 
again. And I saw that the tall, tall figure in the 



124 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

war-stained dress was coming towards me, and that 
its eyes were fixed on me. And they were long, 
dark, ruthless eyes, and above them rose the splen- 
did brow, and beneath them showed the strong, ugly 
mouth, and the hard-set eyes, of Captain Harry 
England. 

He was no beauty, in face save for the fore- 
head, that promised so much, that might have raised 
him so far. But in majesty of figure and bearing 
I use the word "majesty" designedly; there is no 
other that fits Harry England was king of any 
room he might enter, the whole world over. 

Do you remember how some word, some sight, 
may have recalled to you things heard or seen in 
childhood, uncomprehended then, but now, in the 
flash of a new illumination, clear as the sun? That 
happened to me, when I saw Harry England enter 
the dancing room, and remembered, long ago, the 
drunken doctor talking to my father, away at Hiliwa 
Dara. 

" Harry England Harry the Fifth direct 
line, but wrong side of the " And my father's 
voice, stopping his speech. And the strange tales 
about Harry England that had been whispered, even 
in my guarded ear, by other girls at school that 
he was " somebody if he chose to tell " ; that the fam- 
ily he came from had a wonderful old house in War- 
wickshire, called " Faveroy," and had always been 
specially honored at Court. . . . That their name 

meant something " and so did the name of the 
house. That Harry England had run away from 
home when a boy, because some other boy at school 
had said his family was descended from oh, from 
a very wicked word! And he said he would go 
where there were no kings and queens, and make 
himself a king of another kind. . . . 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 125 

These things came back; came back, also, the day 
when I had been at my history lesson with Lor- 
raine, and had read of Harry the Fifth Prince 
Hal and how when he chose to hunt the deer he 
did not take his horse, but ran down the wild, swift 
things on foot, with only his own lords to help him 
drive the quarry " which thing no other man in 
his kingdom might do." Came back, too, the 
remembrance of Harry England himself, as he ran, 
faster surely than ever man had run before, to save 
my father's life; of the tales that were told about 
his marvelous swiftness of foot. . . . 

And as he crossed the room to me, I, meeting him 
for the first time since my childhood, looked on him 
no longer with a child's passionless eyes, but with 
the eyes of a woman. And with a woman's heart 
I knew him, however that old tale might run, as 
kingly; however the record of his days might run 
dark though the tale might be as my king. 

So life is lived in seconds; in minutes long as 
hours. The gray hours and years between them 
are not life. 

Mabelle incarnate prose, as always broke in 
upon my moment of wonder. 

" Look at this tall man! " she exclaimed, her fan 
up to shield her words. " He's coming here. I 
believe it's that terrible Captain England. I wonder 
he didn't get killed in the war by some of our own 
men; there are quite enough people who hate him, 
and who'd have been glad of the chance. Oh, 
talk to him, Dara; here's my beauty boy coming 
back, and if he doesn't ask me to dance I shall 
die ! " 

England, for a moment, had been delayed on his 
way; one or two men had deserted their partners to 
rush up to him and seize him by the hand ... If 



126 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

he was well hated among the islands and it would 
be absurd to say he was not he was also amaz- 
ingly well loved by a certain faithful following. He 
got away from his admirers, I do not know how; 
I watched him making his way through the crowd 
that was momentarily growing thicker . . . almost 
as he was here . . . 

" Your aquamarines look splendid," said a pleas- 
ant, strange voice behind me ; and a strange hand 
well-shaped, well-kept, but burned almost to black- 
ness was familiarly laid on my shoulder. 

I turned round in a flame of anger. Somebody, 
I supposed, had been making too early acquaint- 
ance with the supper table . . . Such things were 
not unknown in the easy-going Love Island of 
Hawoga . . . 

I confronted a face tanned seal-brown, blue 
eyes, a laughing, possessive expression. Assuredly, 
I thought, the key had been left out of the supper- 
room door. 

" Please remove your hand," I said coldly (at 
seventeen, in the Hawongas, a pretty girl is not 
strange to this sort of thing) . " You are making 
a " And suddenly the words died away in my 
throat. 

" Aren't you making a " said the pleasant 
voice. " Do you mean to say you don't know me, 
Dara?" 

I was dumb. I stared at him. And all the 
time, over my shoulder, I felt without eyes I 
even saw Harry England, coming closer 
standing still. 

Mabelle broke in again. 

" I'm Miss Garstang," she said, with a nervous 
little giggle. " I'm your hostess, you know 
won't you introduce yourself? You came with the 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 127 

captain of the boat, didn't you? Can I find you a 
partner? " 

She cast a languishing glance at him. 

I knew what he was going to say by some trick 
of thought reading before he said it. Then it 
came. 

" Why, I think this little lady knows me. I am 
Luke Ivory, and she is to be my wife. 
Remember me now, Dara? " 

Lorraine had trained me well. " Never be shy," 
she used to say. " Never be taken aback. Never 
show feeling publicly. These are the tests of 
good breeding . . ." 

I answered to the test. I don't know what I felt 
at the moment, it was one of those instants when 
temperature of feeling fuses thought I can only 
recall the sensation of sudden deadness that came 
into my hands and my arms, up to the elbows, as the 
blood rushed back to my heart. My fingers seemed 
to be closed round my fan all stiff and cold, like 
dead fingers round a knot of funeral flowers, as I 
replied quite, I think, in an ordinary voice : 

" Certainly, Luke, I remember you now; please 
excuse me, but you have grown and changed so 
much. This is a great surprise. Mabelle, may I 
introduce Mr. Ivory to you ? " 

Maybelle, fingering her program, became in- 
stantly intent on securing the coveted dance ; but she 
had self-possession enough left to tread on my foot 
secretly, and to whisper close to my ear, " Oh, you 
lucky little devil, you sly little devil! " while she 
was scribbling " Ivory " on her card. 

The dance just starting was the one that she 
marked. Luke, after writing " Miss Garstang " 
neatly opposite " Number one," turned to me and, 
smiling, took my card from my hand. 



128 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

By this time my usual following of lads had 
collected from all corners of the veranda, and 
were calling out gay requests for a waltz a two- 
step anything I had left. Luke, smiling still, 
held my card steadily across his palm while he wrote 
his name on it once. Beginning at the second 
dance the name stretched down the card to the last 
dance after supper. 

He gave me back my card, burst one arm round 
Mabelle's most willing waist, and swung out on to 
the floor. 

The boys, seeing my card, voiced their remon- 



" Oh, oh, Miss Hamilton! " " Oh, Miss Dara! 
that's piracy; are you going to let him have the 
lot? " " Don't be put upon; cut half a dozen for 
us!" They clattered and hustled like a flock of 
fowls at feeding time. 

A little way off, Harry England looked at me with 
his strange, dark, silent eyes and, without a word, 
passed down the room, and away. 



CHAPTER VIII 

1 DANCED that dance it was a waltz ; people 
waltzed a great deal in that year. I danced it 
every bar, I reversed as my partner a feathery- 
mustached youth, whom I had selected at ran- 
dom liked to do ; I laughed and talked. I saw 
the people as we swung and glided past them; a few 
chaperons (not many most of the girls had come 
in parties) ; a few non-dancing men, white-clad; the 
plain young woman from the Mission, who never 
got a dance, and never gave up hoping; the grave, 
stately figures of the Hawongan chiefs and chief- 
tainesses, once rulers of the archipelago, with power 
of life and death in their brown hands, now mere 
ciphers in the sum of island politics, mere statues 
of their own past greatness. I saw all these things; 
they did not seem to me to be real. My partner 
was a squeaking ghost that scuttered in space. I 
was a mist, a handful of foam nothing living and 
substantial. There was music, I suppose, or we 
could not have danced, but I cannot remember 
having heard a note of it. I did not seem to be 
living through that dance; it was as if I had slipped 
into a crevice between minute and minute, and, 
removed from the onward rush of time, waited . . . 

The dance came to an end. The youth with the 
feathery mustache let his arm slip down from my 
waist, and halted in an opening among the veranda 
pillars. 

" Let's have the next," he pleaded, fanning me 
129 



130 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

furiously. " What does that fellow from the 
steamer mean by stealing your whole program? " 
(For Luke's announcement, heard by Mabelle, 
myself, and I knew one other, had not caught 
the general ear.) "Can't you Dash him, here 
he is again ! Are you really going to " 

His remonstrances faded away on my ear as the 
noise of a city dies away when the steamer finds her 
speed and glides to sea. Luke had my arm, and 
was leading me down the steps. Luke drew me 
away from the glitter, the laughing and talking and 
violin tuning, the moving crowds, and the still, 
looking-on crowds of the dance. Luke found a 
seat, white in the moonlight, fronted by the silver- 
spangled sea and the hills of the outer islands, far 
and fairy-blue. He swept his hand along it, found 
it damp with night dew, and pulled off his long- 
tailed coat to cushion the bench for me. 

" Now, Dara," he said, sitting down beside me, 
and looking I could not but allow amazingly 
handsome in his shirt sleeves, a costume that above 
all others suits the well-made man, " you and I are 
going to have a talk." 

I pulled myself together. This matter was real; 
it would have to be faced. Above all things, the 
tone in Luke's voice would have to be faced. He 
spoke as if I were his undisputed property . . . 
" The masculine creditor " was a phrase that had 
never fallen on my ears, but I think its spirit was 
in my mind just then. 

" How on earth " I began; but he took up the 
conversation. 

" I hadn't a chance to tell you. I heard the 
manager at Hiliwa Dara had been playing up, and 
there was just time to catch the steamer and go and 
see to things myself. It's nothing serious, but he 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 131 

may have to be sacked . . . But what I really 
wanted to say, Dara, is that I've only an hour or 
two to talk to you, so you simply must cut every- 
thing else. There's a launch going out at high 
tide two o'clock this morning and she's 
arranged to go a few miles out of her way to drop 
me at the island; she'll take about three days, but 
it's better than staying on the chance of anything 
else, with that manager. But don't let's talk about 
him; I say, do you know what a stunning little girl 
you've turned out? " 

" Yes," I answered calmly. " There have been 
a few people here who told me." 

" There would be," said Luke proudly. " Your 
photos don't give one an idea. By the way, I must 
apologize for not having had mine taken lately, but 
I do hate being photo'd so. Lorraine says you're a 
top-notcher in the school. She was awfully pleased 
to see me. She says I've says I'm well, she 
was awfully nice, and she told me she'd have thought 
I was twenty-four or five. Of course, I'm getting 
near twenty." 

1 Yes," I said again. 

There seemed to be something the matter with 
my throat. I had to swallow before I could speak. 
Luke went on, his face turned towards me, his arm 
along the back of the seat behind my shoulders, his 
eyes running over me with a kind of surprised 
delight: 

" Of course, I'm cutting something off my year 
at the School of Mines half of it, anyhow for 
this trip, but as things are I can afford it; I've 
been getting on pretty well, and I felt, apart from 
the plantation business, that I was just about bound 
to see you again . . . Those old people those 
old people! Oh, they were wiser than we knew, 



132 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

Dara. You don't know what that tie has been to 
me these last years. You can't know what it's 
meant " He stopped for a moment, and then 
went on: 

' They said, you know they said, you know " 
He stopped again; it seemed difficult to say. I sat 
as if frozen; I could not think; I watched the lace 
rising and falling on the breast of my sea-blue gown ; 
it seemed to beat like a living heart. 

' They said that when I was twenty-one and you 
were eighteen, don't you remember? " 

I could not speak. 

"Answer, answer!" he said. "Don't you re- 
member? " 

" Yes," I found strength to say. How the reef, 
far out in the moonlight, was calling calling ! 
The call of the sea! The call of the wild sea life, 
and of the wild souls who lived it ! ... 

" That will be next year," said Luke. " Per- 
haps sooner. You know I'm nearer twenty-one 
than you are to eighteen by two months. And I 
shall be twenty-one in two and a half months from 
now. Suppose we say November? I could get 
Dinah to come over as soon as I've settled things up 
with that manager chap, and she could tidy the place 
up for us, and there we should be, settled down as 
snug as two birds in a nest, long before Christmas 
time. How does that strike you, girlie?" 

He was so bright, so boyish and, withal, so manly 
in his manner and his speech that I found myself 
unable to say what I had wanted what I had 
fully meant to say, when we came out together from 
the dancing veranda. I was not even sure what it 
was that I had meant to say. Wherein was any- 
thing altered since I had run up the Residency 
avenue ahead of Lorraine, through the moonlit dust, 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 133 

eager only for the dance and its never-failing 
triumphs? I had known then that I was engaged 
engaged with unusual solemnity to Luke Ivory, 
the lad with whom I had played long ago on the 
plantation. What had happened to alter things 
since then? I had seen Harry England for a 
moment; I had not spoken to him; probably he 
would not care to speak to me, or to have anything 
to do with me, now that he knew . . . 

Of that moment when the rose of life had opened 
before me, and I had, all in an instant, known things 
unspeakable, I was now ashamed. How could I, 
so strictly brought up, have permitted myself to feel 
so for a man who was nothing, who never by any 
possibility could be anything, to me? A man, above 
all, who assuredly had no interest in me. Whereas 
this Luke at my side had stripped the coat from his 
shoulders to make a seat for me; was almost 
trembling with wonder and delight over the change 
in me from little girl to fair, desired woman; asked 
nothing better than to give up his life to caring for 
and living for me . . . And besides, I was vowed 
to him by the strongest of all possible vows. That 
play of my father's and old Ivory's, though every 
one had assured me (without knowing of whom or 
what they spoke) that it was no marriage, still was 
a solemn, a binding tie. I regarded it as such, of 
course. 

I should have been exceedingly glad to see Luke 
and, of course, I was. I was also, of course, 
extremely interested in discussing our future 
arrangements. So I told myself, severely. I sat 
up a little straighter on the bench, shook out my 
dress with a hand that glittered with Luke's jewels, 
and deliberately assumed my share in the talk. 

" It seems a very good plan," I said. " That 



134 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

would mean about three months from now, wouldn't 
it ? I should want quite that time to get my things, 
you know." 

" Oh, get your things, as many as you like, and 
don't spare them," said Luke. " I tell you what, 
Dara, that island is going to be more of a bonanza 
than ever you and I had any idea. Did you never 
wonder why I went to the School of Mines? " 

' Why, no, not exactly. I thought your guard- 
ian ' 

" Don't worry about my guardian. I'm Austra- 
lian enough to be able to guard myself, this good 
while, though I daresay I'd still be sucking toffee 
and writing impositions at school if I were an 
Englishman. I chose to go to the School of Mines 
just as I chose to do the agricultural course, and the 
forestry that's what's made me such a color, but 
I like it, it seems like the color a man ought to be, 
you know ; I hate pinky fellows. Well, I know a bit 
about forestry now, and enough about tropical 
agriculture to see that my manager ought to be 
boiled in oil, and then drowned and as to the 
mines business But I'll keep that for a titbit. 
Thing is, Dara, you can splosh all you like about 
buying pretty-pretties; order them by cable from 
Sydney the boat can send it when they touch at 
the next group. Make yourself look as nice as you 
like, and don't mind the cost." 

He talked on and on. Luke had not been a 
chattering sort of boy in the old days, and I did not 
think he was usually much of a talker in all 
probability now, but the circumstances were not 
usual. There were but a few hours before the boat 
went out again; and he had the accumulated news, 
feelings, hopes of more than five years to let out. 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 135 

I sat beside him on the moon-white bench, silent, 
listening to him. He had much to tell me about 
myself, once the flood of natural young, egotistical 
talk had had full run. I was to take great care of 
my health, and not to get chills, and not to get 
fever, and not to stay out too long in the sun, or 
go swimming without a bathing hat 

And here he broke off to tell me, with sparkling 
eyes, about the swimming races he had won, and the 
long and high jump medals that he held. 

" Not the same year, of course," he said wisely. 
" Swimming doesn't want that kind of muscle you 
get ' bound ' . . . Dara, you can't think how 
how drunk one gets on that sort of glory. It's 
maddening. It has spoiled lots of good men to 
be a smart athlete. I swore it shouldn't spoil me; 
I'd seen a few go that way. So I gave it up, and 
went out of training, but it was hard. I always 
keep fit, of course; but that's not the same. Only, 
you know, I've an idea do I bore you, spilling out 
all my ideas like this? No? Well, then, I'll go 
on I've an idea that a man who keeps up first- 
class athletics, things that need perfect training, 
after his earlier days, is bound to grow into either a 
fool or a brute more likely a brute . . . But 
that can't really interest you, you dear little polite 
thing." 

Could it not? Did I not know of one man who 
had kept up his wonderful strength of body; who 
worshiped it and lived for it? Was he, the 
descendant of the king who hunted the red deer on 
his own swift feet which thing no other man in 
all his realms might compass was he a brute, or 
a fool? 

" He is neither," was my silent verdict. " Luke 



136 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

does not know everything. After all, he is very, 
very young." And I felt superior, patronizing. 
At seventeen I knew I was far older than he. 

" Well," said Luke, switching off again. " I've 
got those medals, and I shall have them made into 
the prettiest kind of a belt clasp for you that 
Sydney can manage but there'll never be any 
more. I have planned out all our life, Dara. It 
looks a long, long road, and a sunny one, with 
pleasant things all the way. They say no one is 
happy. Well, I think you and I are going to break 
that record; aren't we, girlie? " 

Almost shyly he let that wandering arm on the 
back of the seat drop lower, round my shoulders and, 
turning my unresisting face to his, kissed me once 
twice. I kissed him back; I thought it was polite 
that I should do so. Luke set his hands on my 
shoulders and looked at me long and steadily, in the 
brilliant moonlight. 

" You are not much changed, after all, Dara," 
he said. There was something strange in his tone; 
the fire and sparkle, the eager talkativeness of a few 
minutes past seemed to have suddenly died away. 
" Are you sure are you quite sure that you 
wish that I am not hurrying you in settling all 
this? You haven't been saying very much." 

Suddenly I felt afraid, as one does feel afraid of 
those whose nearness to one either in blood or in 
long associations gives them the fearful power of 
reading one's soul. I did not want mine to be 
read I did not know why . . . 

" Oh ! " I cried, bursting into sudden talk, " you 
didn't give me a chance, you had so much to say, 
but, of course, I agree with everything; I shall send 
to Sydney for my things David Farmer's is the 
place, isn't it? and I'll remember everything you 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 137 

told me about being careful and all that. I was 
awfully interested in the things you've been telling 
me. And about the medals. And how you got so 
famed and the School of Mines. Of course I 
am interested and delighted. How could you 
think" 

" All right, I didn't think," said Luke consolingly. 
The shade of disappointment cleared away from his 
face. I, whom many lad lovers in this Love Island 
had made wise beyond my years, could guess what 
was in his mind. " He is thinking," I said to 
myself, " that I am nothing but a child still; now 
that's absurd . . ." But I said no more . . . Do 
you remember the time when you feared to open 
your lips lest some wild animal of a secret that you 
were keeping caged should glimpse the light and 
suddenly bolt for freedom? . . . 

Away on the dancing veranda the violins began 
again, with the firm notes of the piano marching 
steadily beneath. I leant out and listened. The 
music trembled, lifted, and swept, with a swing that 
seemed to reach from stars to earth, into the one 
great waltz of the world. 

" Blue Danube ! Blue Danube ! " I cried, jump- 
ing to my feet. " Let's not miss this. I can't sit 
out Blue Danube. How are you on waltzing? " 

" All right," answered Luke, putting on his coat. 
" I shouldn't like to miss the old Danube myself. 
Come along." He took me by the hand and, 
laughing, we ran together, as we had been used to 
run long ago down the sands of Hiliwa Dara into 
the tossing sea. The great verandas of the Resi- 
dency were trembling from end to end with the 
sway of a hundred dancers; the chaperons, alone, 
and the impassive native kings and queens kept 
their places by the walls. . . . Not even all of 



I 4 o MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

would have predicted it years ago, maybe, with a 
cynical laugh. One who knew the hidden tragedy 
that underlies women's lives would have seen it, with 
a throb of sadness. I, to whom all life beyond 
five and twenty was a sort of unimportant postscript, 
who " could not away with " the silliness of these 
elder folk, was simply irritated and annoyed. My 
scheme of existence had no place for a rejuvenated 
Lorraine. Besides, it was absurd! 

I watched her, looking young and beautiful, 
dancing with fire, attracting the attention of half 
the room, though all were busy enjoying the waltz 
themselves. I shook my head impatiently, held out 
my right hand to Luke, and swung into the dance. 
One must really try and forget such nonsense ! . . . 

What the real cause of that change had been 
what decree of Fate had gone forth in the hour that 
elapsed between the beginning of the dance and the 
playing of " Blue Danube " I knew or guessed no 
more than I guessed of the Great War that lay so 
many years ahead, nor of the ships that then should 
fly through blue air instead of blue water. Never- 
theless the powers of chance had been playing at 
dice for me within that hour, and the die that had 
made the deciding throw was marked " Lorraine." 

We finished the dance; the famous waltz throbbed 
to its very end. We drew back against the veranda 
rails, Luke fanning me vigorously. The fan he 
held was one of his gifts, like my necklace, my 
bracelet, earrings and ring; my gloves, my beautiful 
lace handkerchief. I had never been allowed to 
accept gifts from any other man; indeed, I never 
had wished to accept any gifts that had been offered 
to me save these of Luke's . . . 

While he waved the carved sandalwood fan back 
and forward in front of me, scenting the air with 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 141 

its delicate fresh perfume, I found myself thinking 
and wondering ... If Harry England were in 
love, really in love with any girl, what would he give 
her? Somehow I felt it would not be fans and 
rings and handkerchiefs. I wondered what it 
would be. 

"Want to dance the next?" broke in Luke. 
" We got on bonzer, didn't we? " 

I didn't want to dance the next; I wanted to 
snatch a moment to look about me to see to 
think but I did not care to say so. The ancient 
guile of my sex came to the rescue. 

" Lorraine is looking at you," I said. She was; 
she had fixed those emerald eyes of hers on him from 
across the veranda; unmistakably she wished to 
speak to him again. " Don't you think," I said, 
" that you might give her a dance? She seems keen 
on it to-night." 

" I should like to, if you don't mind," he answered 
promptly. " She's a cracker at dancing. I don't 
say you are not first class yourself, but, of course, 
she's had much longer to learn than you." 

" I should think so," I laughed in reply; Lorraine's 
superior age seemed to me, naturally, the best of 
jokes . . . 

" Keep the next but one for me," said Luke, 
walking off. 

Mabelle's red head came round the corner of a 
pillar. 

" Are you going to keep him all the night to 
yourself, you sly thing? " she breathed. " Can't 
you cut a dance or two, and let one have a chance? 
He dances like an angel; I was sure he would and 
you've got him safe, you needn't mind me. Can't I 
introduce any one to you? I'm your hostess, you 
know, I ought to " 



i 4 2 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

" Introduce Captain England, if you like," I 
said, swaying my fan back and forwards to hide the 
trembling of my hands. I was in agony lest some 
one should claim me first . . . 

But Mabelle was anxious on her own account to 
see me ably partnered. She had found Harry 
England somewhere outside the veranda before ten 
bars of " Les Amoureuses " were past. She 
brought him up and presented him formally. Luke 
and Lorraine by now were waltzing together. She 
did not look into his eyes and languish as she had 
done in England's arms; I could only see, as she 
passed, her white, black-lashed lids; her lips were 
a little parted, her hand rested lightly very 
lightly on Luke's arm. I wondered what she was 
thinking of. As to Luke, his face expressed very 
clearly the pleasure of dancing with an excellent 
partner. He was talking, but I could not hear 
what he said. 

Mabelle bustled off. Harry England, without a 
word not even the conventional " May I have the 
pleasure? " took my hand and my waist and swept 
me out on the veranda. And I knew in an instant 
that I had never danced in my life before. 

He danced without speaking; he did not look at 
me. He seemed to make no effort whatever, yet I 
flew in his touch like a leaf blown by the wind. I 
could not feel the floor; my feet seemed to glide 
upon waves of pure music. And the music was 
Harry England; and all the time, though he never 
opened his lips, it was speaking for him; telling me 
things wonderful, not to be believed . . . 

This was what it meant to dance, I kept thinking. 
This was what waltzes were written for. How was 
it I had never known ? 

. . . Something broke, and came crashing down 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 143 

to ruin. It was only the end of the dance, but for 
a moment I felt as one feels who has slipped from a 
height. Then I knew that I was standing at the 
side of the veranda and that Harry England still 
without a word had bowed to me and left me. 
I did not need to be told why he had not spoken. 
Through all the wonder of the dance, through all 
the unbelievable, beautiful things that the music was 
saying to me, I had felt beneath the scorching 
breath of an unseen lava flow the current of 
England's anger. The anger was not for me; at 
least for me only in part; but its very presence 
burned. And the fire that had lit it was I 
knew Luke Ivory's speech. 

What then? One does not live in a Love Island 
without becoming wise, too wise, about love. 
Trouble, then. Danger, then. If Luke was a boy 
almost he had a will of cast steel. If England had 
no right to be angered about anything that concerned 
me he was not one to trouble over rights or 
wrongs. 

"It isn't my fault?" I thought to myself. 
"What am I to do?" 

" Put in your hairpins; you look half wild," said 
Lorraine's cool voice, as if in answer. She was 
sitting beside me ; England of course had 
steered me to my chaperon before leaving me, but I 
had not noticed it till then. 

" Bend down," said Lorraine, " I'll do it." She 
settled my hair with deft fingers. " Why did you 
dance with England? " she whispered almost in my 
ear. 

"Did you not want me to?" I asked, puzzled 
and confused. Had Lorraine taken a fancy but, 
no, that was too absurd! I could not construe the 
look she gave me. 



144 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

'Why did you?" she said again, with burning 
eyes. 

It seemed as if she had not heard me. There 
was surely something mad about Lorraine that 
night. She looked at me as if she loved and hated 
me, all in the same instant; she almost caressed my 
hair, and then pushed me away from her. 

" Go and dance," she said. " Go and dance with 
him. He is coming for you." 

' Why, he is going down the steps," I said; and, 
indeed, I had just caught sight of England's tall 
figure passing out into the moonlight. 

Lorraine gave a low, breathless laugh and twisted 
me round by one arm. Luke Ivory was standing 
beside me, program in hand. 

" I'll throw this away," he said. " We shan't 
want it again." 

" Oh, no, you won't want it again," said Lorraine, 
with another of those curious laughs. Luke gave 
me his arm. 

" We'll have another stroll," he said, leading 
me down the steps. " How astonishingly well 
Lorraine is looking. She is really a beauty, isn't 
she?" 

" I suppose she was when she was young," I 
answered lightly. What had Lorraine to do 
with us? 

Luke made no reply to this. He waited till we 
were out of earshot of the veranda, and then began, 
as we walked slowly in the moonlight down the 
tinkling coral pathway: 

" Dara, I've a favor to ask you. I might make 
it a right, but I won't." 

"Well?" I answered him listlessly, turning 
round and round the old turquoise ring it was on 
my little finger now, being far too small for the 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 145 

third, which besides was occupied with Luke's half 
hoop of diamond-pointed aquamarines. 

" I want to ask you not to dance with that man 
again." 

"What man?" 

" That's foolish. Of course you know whom I 
mean. Captain England." 

" Lorraine " 

" I know she did. But Lorraine's much older 
than you, and anyhow I think she might have been 
better employed. Thing is, England's not fit for 
you to dance with." 

' What do you know against him? " 

" Nothing but what you know yourself. You 
can't have lived here all these years " 

" He's been away at the war." 

"Are you defending him?" asked Luke, with a 
tone in his voice that reminded me more than a little 
of old Ivory. 

At this my temper always quick, like that of 
most red-haired people sprang into flame. 

"Why should I not defend him?" I asked, 
dropping Luke's arm and turning face to face with 
him. We eyed each other like two fencers about to 
give battle. 

" Because," said Luke, beginning to breathe hard, 
" he's the worst man in the islands, and you should 
not even know enough about him to discuss him, if 
I could help it." 

" I don't see that you can," was my reply. As he 
grew hot I seemed to grow cold. 

"Can't I? Can't I? I think a man has a 
right to " 

" Hush ! " I broke in, with a warning push on his 
arm. " Somebody's coming." The gravel had 
tinkled again in the shadow of a big mango tree. 



146 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

Luke looked round, saw something that I did not, 
and deliberately, in a clear voice, went on : 

" A man has a right to protect his wife." 

The step came nearer. A man moved out of the 
shadow of the mango tree into the vivid moon- 
light . . . Yes, I had known it was England. 

If Luke, I thought, chose to discuss intimate 
matters in the presence of other people, I was not 
going to balk him. 

" I didn't know you had one," was my reply. 

England came nearer, walking slowly; he had a 
small cigar in his hand, and was cutting off the tip. 
He stopped when he reached us, and nodded to 
Luke. I was sure he must have heard every word, 
but from his manner no one would have guessed it. 

" You are the little boy I took away from Hiliwa 
Dara six years ago," he remarked. " You've grown 
quite a lot. Are you still at school? " He nipped 
the end off his cigar and struck a match. 

" School of Mines," said Luke. 

Every word of England's had been an insult, but 
Luke spoke with perfect self-possession and courtesy. 
I felt that I ought to have admired him for it. 

" Oh ! " observed England, putting a match to his 
cigar. " Do you mind, Dara?" he asked me, 
holding it to his lips. 

He had put a match to something more than his 
cigar, as I saw by the sudden light in Luke's eyes 
when my name was spoken. But still my old com- 
rade kept hold of himself. 

"Mrs. Ivory!" he replied evenly, "does not 
mind smoking in the open air, I think." 

" Where is she? " asked England, with an air of 
surprise. He looked up and down the pathway. 
" I don't see any one about but Dara and you." 

" Dara," said Luke, and now there was a tone in 



H7 

his voice that told of rising tides " Dara is my 
wife." 

Harry England under the light of the high, full 
moon looked from one to the other of us. His 
face was inexpressive. 

" What is the joke? " he asked. And he put the 
small cigar back into his mouth and began to draw 
at it. "Can you smoke?" he asked incidentally, 
holding out his case to Luke. The verb was another 
insult. I began to understand why so many men, 
in so many islands, hated this Harry England. 

Luke took no notice of the question or of the 
offered case. 

" There is no joke," he said. " Dara and I were 
married at Hiliwa Dara Plantation six years ago." 

" Oh! " I screamed, " and you promised on the 
Bible not to tell." 

" You'll remember," said Luke, " that I made an 
exception." 

" It was nonsense," I said, breathing quickly, my 
hands clenched tightly over my fan Luke's fan. 
" I know it was. I've asked." 

" And you promised on the Bible, without any 
exceptions, not to tell," observed Luke. 

'I didn't I" 

" I thought you said you did. But this is rather 
public." 

" It needn't be," remarked England. He began 
to stroll away. 

" Just wait a minute," said Luke, with a certain 
dangerous coolness in his voice. " Dara and I can 
talk presently. You and I are going to talk now. 
That is Dara, I'll take you back to Lorraine for 
the present, and I hope you won't mind if I cut one 
or two of your dances." 

I had been a greater fool by far than Nature had 



148 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

made me had I not understood what was in the wind. 
But I consented to return. My secret plan was to 
detain Luke at all hazards once we were in the 
dancing veranda again. I pretended not to under- 
stand; I laughed and talked as we returned to the 
house. What a night it was ! The shadows under 
the mango domes were pools of ink, the coral path 
a strip of dazzling silver. Across the sea of moon- 
light once or twice flying foxes sped, black, silent, 
big as dogs. . . . 

Deceive, if you can, a great criminal lawyer; a 
priest skilled in the care and cure of souls; a friend 
who has been your companion during years of 
maturity. But never hope to deceive the man or 
woman whose childish life has been knit with yours. 

Luke knew exactly what I was doing; what I 
meant to do. We had but reached the foot of the 
veranda steps when he loosed my arm, bowed as 
politely as if he had met me for the first time that 
night, ran up another flight of steps, and disappeared 
among the dancers. I followed as quickly as I 
could. He was not to be seen. Certainly, what- 
ever his intentions were, he had not gone straight 
back to the place where he had left England. 

" He will go some roundabout way," I thought, 
my heart beating wildly. " I must find out." But 
I knew that there was no time or almost none 
for finding. Before I could track out Luke, danger 
would have passed into disaster. And I could not 
think I could not decide what to do. 

" Lorraine ! " was the only thought that came to 
me. Lorraine never lost her head; she always knew 
what was to be done . . . 

But Lorraine was dancing. In her new beauty, 
with that unfamiliar, novel charm circling her like a 
halo, she was gliding down the veranda in long 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 149 

curves and sweeps like a skater, a khaki-clad arm 
about her waist. She seemed entirely absorbed in 
the dance. How was I to attract her attention? 

" Oh, my God! |* I said to myself; " they'll kill 
each other! " I hid behind a palm; if I were seen 
partnerless half a dozen of my usual following 
would be on the alert at once . . . Lorraine swept 
by again. I looked out through the leaves. Her 
glance passed over me; I was sure she had not seen 
me. "What am I to do?" I thought piteously. 
"What am I to do?" 

The band blared on; cornet, piano, first and 
second violin. " White Heather " it was now. 
Somebody began to sing the words, and the whole 
veranda took them up and swept dancing on to the 
tune of: 

" Speed, bonny boat, like a bird on the wing, 
' Onward,' the sailors cry ; 

. . . ' Carry the lad that's born to be King, . . . 
Over the sea to Skye.' " 

I almost burst out crying. What were the " lad 
born to be King " and that other lad whose ring I 
wore doing now, outside there in the peaceful 
moonlight? 

But I had, as usual, misjudged Lorraine. She 
had seen my face; she had read disaster in it and, 
with that swift mind of hers, guessed and decided in 
an instant. She took another turn or so along the 
veranda, and then disengaged herself from her 
partner. 

" So sorry," I heard her saying, " but that 
naughty little niece of mine she has disappeared, 
and I must look after her. It's a dreadful thing to 
be a chaperon, isn't it? No, no, I won't trouble 
you certainly not. I'll just run out and see where 



150 

she has got off to, and with whom. These girls, 
these little girls I " She slipped away from the 
young soldier I think he hardly knew how and 
passing by my hiding place motioned with one hand 
to the low veranda railing. I understood her, and 
was over in an instant, unobserved. The house, 
like many island homes, was set on piles seven feet 
high. Lorraine stepped underneath into the dense 
shadow. Above our heads the feet of the dancers 
slipped and slid, with a sound like a field of wind- 
blown corn; the flooring trembled; "White 
Heather" pealed from piano and violin 

..." Carry the lad that's born to be King . . ." 

"Have they quarreled?" demanded my aunt 
instantly. Her sequins and diamonds glistened in 
the dusk; her face was a pale blur above her 
shadowy dress. 

" Yes what am I to do ? They're going to 
fight. Oh, Lorraine, I'm sure they're fighting now; 
what shall I " 

" He will be killed if they do," said Lorraine, 
and even in the dusk among the piles I thought 
I saw her face turn paler. She swept her dress 
about her. " Take me to where you left them 
instantly," she said. 

"He won't be killed!" I told her tremblingly, 
as I led the way to the coral pathway and the mango 
trees. " He is so much older and " 

" You little fool ! " said Lorraine bitingly. ' You 
don't deserve " She broke off short. " Run/' 
she said. "They are all going in to supper now; 
no one will see." 

The waltz had ended; there was a great shuffling 
of feet. I ran, She followed me, light as a deer. 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 151 

In the darkness of the mango avenue I thought I 
heard other steps, but I did not pause to look 
behind. Fear had seized me by the heart; for the 
first time I seemed to understand what these male 
passions meant unleashed; what horror they might 
work. 

We came out into the moonlight; and there, ten 
paces from us, were Luke and Harry England. 
For a moment I felt relieved; they seemed to be 
simply talking . . . 

Lorraine checked me. We crept nearer. They 
did not notice us. 

". . . believe it or not, it's true," Luke was 
saying. I could see his face, though I could not 
see the other. He looked a noble youth ; a true and 
honorable man. Young as he was, his hands were 
strong enough to carry the burden of a loved 
woman's life. 

England said something, I do not know what. 
The low bass purr of his voice carried less certainly 
than Luke's clearer tone. 

"If you've any decent feeling you will let her 
alone," spoke Luke again. " I want your word on 
that before I sail to-night." 

A brief, scornful question fell from England's 
lips. 

" The right of her husband," was Luke's answer. 

England's reply this time I heard in part, but it 
was couched in words that I did not understand. 
And Luke, without an instant's hesitation, struck 
him on the mouth. And as I saw his lithe young 
body swing out in a line with his arm I screamed. 

It was that, I think, that saved his life. More 
men than one among the islands had been sent to 
their long sleep beneath the palms by one of 
England's terrible counters. But why should I not 



152 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

say it? Harry England loved me in his own wild 
way; and the sound of my voice crying out delayed 
his hand for the fraction of a second that was 
necessary to save it from yet another stain. In that 
brief moment Lorraine, with a wildcat spring, had 
flung herself between the pair. Either of the men 
could have snapped her white, slim arm like a 
flower stalk; but she held them as securely as if she 
had been a giantess. 

" Have either of you thought," she panted, 
" what a scandal you are making? Do you know 
Hawonga ? Not one of the three of you will have 
a rag of character left to-morrow. I suppose you 
men can do without it, but what about my niece? " 

The two had fallen apart. There was blood on 
England's mouth; he did not wipe it, but let it fall 
in a trickling stream over his khaki coat. On his 
hard, teak-like face, now fully visible under the 
moon, there was not a sign of expression. Even 
those dark, ordinarily ruthless-looking eyes were 
empty as bits of glass. I do not know why, but it 
frightened me. He seemed like something not 
quite human. 

Luke looked frankly furious, now that his guard 
of self-command was fairly beaten down. I never 
saw him handsomer; he was to my excited fancy 
of the moment like a young St. George conquering 
the dragon. 

" Oh, anybody ought to love you ! " I thought in 
my own mind. But at the face of the dragon I did 
not dare, after the first glance, to look at all. I did 
not dare to think about it. 

" If you suppose it's going to stop there " said 
Luke, breathing hard. 

" I don't," said Harry England. His voice 
seemed to have gone down a note or two deeper 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 153 

since I last heard it; it made one think of the sound 
of distant but advancing thunder. 

Into the momentary silence that fell all three 
of us standing still, and looking at one another 
came a curious, hissing sound. I thought it was a 
snake at first, and started back. Then, being island 
bred, I recognized it for the noise that is sometimes 
made by the turtle when excited or alarmed, and 
immediately I knew whose were the feet that, almost 
soundless, had followed us down the mango avenue. 

Lorraine knew, too. Without turning round she 
said to me, " The Queen." 

I fancy Queen Lalua had been in hiding despite 
her age and fatness, she possessed the native talent 
for concealing herself like an animal in almost any 
cover. But she came forward with perfect dignity, 
carrying her turtle (the insignia of royalty in the 
Hawonga Islands) under one arm, and trailing her 
orange satin robes on the gravel as she walked. 
Behind her, like a shadow, silent and unobtrusive, 
crept the half-caste maid of honor, Maiera. 

"What is dis? " said Lalua, speaking in good 
English, and with the air of majesty that not even 
two depositions had removed from her any more 
than they had removed her influence and authority 
in the islands. " England, why you fighting wit' 
dis young Ariki? " (chief). 

" I am not fighting," was England's reply. " Not 
yet." 

" He has blooded your mout'." 
" That will be paid for." 
" Paid for how, England? " 

Fifteen years ago, when Harry England had been 
eighteen almost the age of Luke and Lalua 
had been nine and twenty, beautiful and a queen 



154 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

indeed, people had told tales of them in the islands. 
They always tell tales. Those may or may not 
have been true. Lalua in these latter days said 
that she loved " England " like a son. And I think 
she did. It is certain that she had more influence 
over him than had any one in the Hawongas. He 
answered her now, though probably he would have 
answered no one else who had so questioned him. 

" The same way Williams paid, and Nukagiva 
Jack." 

" As soon as you like, and as much as you like," 
interrupted Luke. " You needn't think you are the 
only man in the Pacific." 

" You shall not fight him, if you have any of the 
sense at all," said Lalua. " You no want to die so 
young, you with the pretty girl to love." 

" Excuse me, madam," was Luke's polite reply. 
" This is my affair." 

" And mine, Queen," said Harry England. 
" Ivory and I will settle later." He had not 
changed an iota of that curious calm. Luke was 
still flushed and vivid-eyed. 

" Youth," I heard Lorraine say to herself, 
scarce above her breath. " Oh, God, youth! " It 
seemed to me exceedingly funny that she should say 
that funny, yet exasperating . . . 

Nobody asked what had happened to Williams 
and Nukagiva Jack. Lalua and Maiera evidently 
knew, and the rest of us had no difficulty in guessing. 
But I could not believe England meant that to 
Luke Ivory. I thought they might fight, and that 
some one - perhaps both would be hurt. No 
more. 

Lalua the Queen wherever and however 
she had gained her knowledge, knew better. 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 155 

" He will kill him wid his hand," she stated to 
Lorraine, quite coolly. 

" If he does," said Lorraine, her rapier spirit 
suddenly flashing from its sheath, " he shall die 
himself." 

Oh, the wisdom, the shrewdness in the look that 
Lalua cast her! Lalua, who had ruled a group of 
islands for thirty years; Lalua, whose power 
not even the British Empire had availed to de- 
throne ! 

" Some one say a t'ing and not mean it, many 
time," said the Queen, in an absent, singsong tone. 
" Dat one not you." 

Maiera, the maid of honor, silent, beautiful, 
watched without a word. 

The Queen fixed England with her glance. 

" You shall not fight wit' him," she pronounced. 
He returned her look with one in which there was a 
certain questioning. He seemed to see behind her 
words. But the feeling of thunder in the air of 
male, cruel passions let loose still remained. I 
wondered if Lorraine felt it as I did. 

" I beg your pardon, madam, but he certainly 
will," put in Luke. " He wants a lesson." 

" Maybe, but you not to give it," answered Lalua. 
She took one step to England, and whispered briefly 
in his ear. I saw the sinister stillness of his face 
break up. His eye flashed dark lightning; he 
laughed. But he looked at no one. I felt him, if 
I may put it so, not looking. 

" I shan't interfere with you, Ivory," he stated. 

At this Luke's politeness, his consideration for 
the presence of ladies, failed him I cannot blame 
him much; England's tone would have vexed a saint. 
Luke flew at him on the spot. But Lalua the Queen, 



156 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

wise in the ways of this tempestuous Love Island, 
had expected as much, and was on the watch. She, 
in her turn, simply fell with the whole weight of her 
six feet and sixteen stone on Luke, and whelmed him 
in satin-smothered flesh. 

"Go, you England!" she ordered. And 
England, laughing a little, went away. 

With Lalua the Queen enveloping him from the 
rear, and Maiera the beautiful maid of honor not at 
all unwilling, hanging round his neck in front, Luke 
had to give in. Lalua was the first to relax her 
hold. Maiera, for some reason or no reason, chose 
to hold on until the last sound of Harry England's 
footsteps had died away; until I began to feel a little 
amazed, and (illogically) a little jealous, and until 
Lorraine flashed a contemptuous look at her that 
said " Native " as plain as speech. Then she 
released him and dramatically, with a jeweled, 
creamy finger, pointed downwards to the harbor. 

"Look!" she said. "That's the launch. 
Listen!;' 

A thin, complaining wail came up to the coral 
terrace. 

" Lord ! " said Luke, " I shall just have time to 
catch her. Lorraine, a word with you." He drew 
aside from Lalua and her maid of honor. " You 
needn't go, Dara; I had just as soon you heard me. 
Lorraine, I have got to sail in that boat, but I would 
rather risk anything than go if you weren't here. 
I trust you. Don't let that that " 

" I know the word you mean," she said calmly. 
" I thought it was very decent of you not to use it. 
Most men would have to one or the Englands of 
Faveroy." 

" Don't let him," went on Luke, " get her 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 157 

talked about. He will if he can. She's too young 
to understand him. I I trust Good-by, Lor- 
raine, good-by. There's no one like you." He 
wrung her hand till I think her rings must have cut 
into the flesh (why does a man never remember 
one's rings?), kissed me, suddenly and strongly, and 
with a nod to Lalua, whom he had not yet forgiven, 
went down the walk. 

Lalua watched him away. 

" He will see England, perhaps," she announced, 
apparently to no one. " No matter, England will 
not fight him. Never will he." 

" Queen, you are wonderful," said Lorraine, 
fixing Lalua with her deep green eyes. For once, I 
think, she felt she had met her superior. The heart 
of Queen Lalua was a well too deep for her 
plummet. 

"Yes," said Lalua the Queen, "I am." She 
seemed like some old Assyrian statue, with her 
crown and her loose, short, curling hair, and her 
massive draperies, as she stood looking down over 
the harbor and the sleeping town. 

It was two o'clock; all lights were out in Port 
Rodney; all sounds hushed in the flowery, dusty 
streets that lay so small and clear beneath the 
moon. 

" Dis is a night," said the Queen, " on what t'ings 
may happen, as you say." She used an expressive 
native translation. " Dat means," she said, " dat 
the god which make trouble, he walk about to-night. 
I think enough t'ing have happen. Very good you 
shall, we shall all go home to de beds." 

And we went. And, expecting to lie awake till 
dawn, I, who was broken almost to pieces by the 
falling of event after event in the few brief hours 



158 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

of that evening, fell dead asleep, and slept till the 
sun was high. 

Lorraine in the morning told me that Luke had 
sailed. 

" He will be back by the steamer in three weeks' 
time," she said. 



CHAPTER IX 

IT was the siesta, or, as they call it in the islands, 
the lie-down hour. 

From one to three, over most of the island world, 
is the loneliest time of day. There is no " hush of 
morning." As soon as the. sun is up, often before, 
wood is being chopped, fires lit, buckets are rattling 
beneath iron tanks, china tinkling on tables. Boots 
sound on the carpetless long floors of the verandas. 
Horses, tied to gates, paw noisily and shake their 
bridled heads. The coming of the sun is every one's 
alarm gong; sets every one to his business of the 
day. 

Nor is there hush of midnight. If the moon is 
full, towns may be empty, but beaches, forests, and 
lagoons will be gay with black folk and white, 
picnicking, fishing, riding, walking, well into the small 
hours. And in the still, star-jeweled times that 
come between moon and moon there will be enough 
love wandering going on to give a thrill of move- 
ment to the darkest night. 

For solitude you must look to the sun. In the 
fierce hours that run between one and three no one 
stirs out who is not obliged. To this time of the 
day belongs by right the feeling of solitude, of 
Cortez-like discovery, that the early-morning wan- 
derer seeks in colder lands. And in these hours, 
shielded by noon's white fire, go people who have 
secret errands on hand. Sometimes they are lovers 
who have no right to love ... Is not He safe 
behind mosquito nets and screens till the sun touches 



160 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

the green tops of the hills? Is not She lying 
imprisoned, frail, heat-hypnotized, on her veranda 
couch, the novel fallen on the floor, the brown girl 
fanning, fanning? . . . Sometimes they are native 
servants sent with notes, not meant to be carried 
in the busy, observant hours. Sometimes they are 
girls who slip away from chaperons as I did. 

To tell the truth, and to use the slang I used, I 
was " fed up " with Lorraine. Since Luke's depar- 
ture, now a week past, she had scarcely let me go out 
of her sight without inquiring where I was going. 
Why I wanted to go there, and (usually) proposing 
that she or Dinah should go, too. This, in spite of 
the fact that Harry England had taken his ship 
(brought up to meet him from Sydney) out of 
harbor the very day after the dance, and that nobody 
had heard of him since, nor did any one expect to 
hear soon, since he had cleared for Papeete, a fort- 
night's journey away. 

Besides, I had done nothing that any one could 
blame. What was it, put into words? I had 
danced once with Captain England. I had ex- 
changed about a dozen words with him. I had 
defended him, in his absence, when Luke began 
talking unkindly and uncharitably about him. 
Should I on that account have been hunted and 
harried as I was being hunted and harried? (So I 
put it to myself.) Why, I had not even made 
objection when Dinah and Lorraine began writing 
out lists of clothes for my trousseau, and sending 
them off to Sydney. (I need not say that Dinah 
did none of the writing; she merely helped with 
comments, such as : " Two dozen of everything, 
Miss Lorraine, because once the northwest begins, 
you're all of a presbyterian as soon as the sun's up, 
and wants two shifts a day." 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 161 

" Have one of the dresses that lovely brown color, 
Miss Lorraine; Kaffir legs they call it" (a near 
enough shot at the then modish "cafe au lait"). 
And of course " A nice thin black piece or so can 
be put away in the wardrobe, and you never know 
when it won't be wanted. You're getting as thin 
as a rasher, Miss Lorraine, and as for me, I don't 
seem to fancy my meals as much as I used to . . ." 

Had I ever interfered with this chosen amusement 
of Dinah and my aunt? Had I ever omitted to 
wear Luke's little, worn-out ring on my smallest 
finger, and the new aquamarine and diamond hoop 
on the third? Had I even in my own mind any 
intention of "backing out"? No not since 
Harry England sailed for Port Hervey in the Queen 
of the Islands without a look, or a letter, or a 
word ... I even discussed the question of the cere- 
mony. I told Lorraine and Dinah everything that 
my married friends had said about the impossibility 
of legally marrying at the absurd age of twelve; 
(Lorraine's silence on that point and her curious 
looks puzzled me; but I passed them by as unim- 
portant). I had agreed to Dinah's suggestion that 
" Mr. Luke " and I should be " registered by the 
government " instead of being married again by 
a clergyman. I had done everything everybody 
wanted me to do; and if my heart seemed all on fire 
within, and if I spent half the nights crying, with my 
head out on my window sill to feel the wild sea 
breeze sweep up from those unknown worlds whither 
Harry England had sailed nobody knew. No- 
body should know. That was my resolve. 

But, nevertheless, I was chaperoned and over- 
chaperoned. So, on a white-hot afternoon, at the 
impossible hour of two, I put on my largest hat, 
took an umbrella, and, shod with silence and with 



162 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

tennis shoes, slipped out by the back way. I was 
going to call on the Queen. 

Lalua had always been kind to me (I think she 
admired my copper hair; all brown people have a 
special fancy for copper-haired and red-haired folk) , 
and now and again she would send me an island 
present a dinner, done up in banana leaves and 
mats; sucking pig, fowl, " palolo " sea worms; 
" palusani " of taro leaf and cocoanut cream; a 
bucket of turtle eggs ; a plume of silvery " reva- 
reva " for my hair. Of course, instructed by 
Lorraine, I sent her presents in return. This last 
time Lalua had been amazingly generous. Her 
maid of honor, the cream-colored, pretty Maiera, 
had brought me only a day or two past quite a load 
of wonderful things: shell necklaces of rose and 
amber color; crowns of carved mother-of-pearl; hats 
finer than the finest Panama, plaited by Lalua's own 
house maidens, and most interesting of all a 
tiny packet of banana leaf, tied up with yellow spider 
silk, and containing one huge, perfect, rose-colored 
pearl, enveloped in a wrapper of finest reva-reva 
tissue. On the tissue some one had written with a 
delicately pointed pen: 

" From the Queen of the Islands to the Queen of 
Hearts." 

Some one? Lalua, of course. She was the Queen 
of the Islands, even if twice deposed. She was fond 
of joking, in a stately way, about my popularity 
among the white lads of Hawonga. Yes, it was 
undoubtedly Lalua. I was so sure of that that I did 
not even ask Lorraine. Besides it wasn't necessary 
to show the packet to her at all. I had " palmed " 
it, like a conjuror, in opening the basket. I didn't 
know why. It had looked as if it were meant to be 
" palmed " that was all. 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 163 

Ajid now, beneath the fiery shield of midday, 
through the white, deserted streets, and along hot 
lanes scented with climbing stephanotis, honeysuckle, 
and jasmine, I was hurrying to see Lalua, and to 
thank her. 

The palace of the Queen stood some way outside 
the town. It was a handsome building, two-storied, 
verandaed, arcaded, made of white coral blocks. It 
had, as I knew, plenty of European furniture inside; 
four-post beds (never slept in), dining tables (on 
which no meal was ever laid), great gilded chairs 
in which no one had ever sat. It had chandeliers of 
tinkling glass, always unlighted, probably unlight- 
able. It was always shown to strangers proudly; 
and after it had been shown, and refreshments had 
been served on the terrace outside, and good-bys 
said, Lalua the Queen used to shut it and lock it all 
up, and go home. 

Home was a nice, low, comfortable reed hut just 
beyond the palace enclosure, handy to the beach for 
fishing, and unencumbered with tiresome windows, 
which only let in the light and annoyed you when 
you wanted to sleep. Home hadn't any furniture 
to speak of except the great ironwood, native-made 
sofa that stood under the thatched veranda roof, 
looking down on the lagoon; queens had to have an 
ironwood sofa, even if they didn't sit on it, just as 
they had to have a turtle or so for style. Home 
had a proper kava bowl, big as a sponge bath, 
wherein the great Pacific drink might be brewed of 
nights; a row of dinner mats, to put the banana leaf 
plates on, fresh and fresh at each meal; a bed with 
an immense patchwork quilt; cooking pots a few. 
No more. Lalua the Queen chose to have it so. 
She was in this like almost all the island sovereigns 
of her day. 



164 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

Lalua the Queen was not asleep when I came up 
the sanded pathway leading to her house. I had 
known she would not be. She usually passed the 
hours from twelve (which was dinner hour) until 
about four, sitting on her state sofa of ironwood, 
with her turtle beside her, doing nothing whatever. 
Lalua the Queen would not have understood Shake- 
speare's foolish remarks about the " infinite heart's- 
ease " that kings neglect, and " private men en- 
joy." Lalua would have seen no good in being a 
king, or a queen, if you could not sit half the day 
listening to the sea on the reef, and the sea wind 
in the palms, drinking a cup of kava now and then, 
but for the most part savoring the joy of utter 
idleness. 

I might have been island bred, instead of only 
island born, for the sympathy that I had with all 
such views of life. Lorraine, that spirit of fire, 
had but little in common with me. I did not care 
for study; I read unwillingly all things save poetry; 
I hated rule and order, though my life had been 
ruled and ordered ever since I could remember. I 
could, and did, sit with Lalua the Queen sometimes, 
smoking a (strictly forbidden) cigarette, looking 
out on the wondrous green of the lagoon, listening 
to the hypnotic murmur of the reef, and neither talk- 
ing nor (I believe) thinking for an hour at a time. 

I did so now. She was sitting on her sofa of 
state, her eyes (beautiful eyes yet, in spite of her 
five and forty years) 

" Fixed upon the far sea line " 

and she barely greeted me as I came in. But I knew 
she was glad to see me. I dropped to the floor, and, 
sitting native fashion, cross-legged, my head against 
Lalua's knees, I dreamed- . . . 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 165 

It must have been an hour or more before Maiera 
came in with cocoanuts for us. She had been asleep 
on the back veranda. It is etiquette in the Ha- 
wongas, and in many other islands, to open drinking 
nuts in the presence of the guest. There have been 
times when the life of the guest depended on it. 

Maiera took the husked nuts, rough spheres of 
fibrous white, from the boy who had cleaned them, 
stuck a knife point into two out of the three eyes of 
each, and handed one to Lalua, and the other to me. 
I watched her idly. I saw nothing out of the com- 
mon in anything she did. But when I had drunk the 
cool, sweet water, and was tilting the nut to get the 
final drops, I felt something small and hard roll 
down the interior and touch my lip. I was so as- 
tonished that I opened my mouth to speak, and im- 
mediately the small, hard thing slipped into it. 

I dropped it on my hand, and behold, it was a 
pearl; a perfect, rose-colored pearl of the rarest 
kind, large as a falcon's eye the match, in every 
detail, of the pearl that I had at that moment in my 
pocket. 

I had not been brought up in the islands without 
knowing that the value of a rare pearl is more than 
doubled more than trebled, sometimes if you 
can find its mate. These pearls, so matched, were 
fit for the ears of any princess in Europe. You 
could not see them as anything but earrings. And 
my ears were pierced had been pierced two years 
ago, by Lalua herself, at my special request, because 
I had a little pair of hook earrings, once my moth- 
er's, and wanted to wear them. They were pearls 
but with what a difference ! 

" O Lalua, Lalua! " I cried. " People say that 
you and Maiera are sorceresses, and I think it must 
be true. How did you enchant this pearl into the 



166 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

cocoanut? And the other I never thanked you 
for that but I'm afraid I sha'n't be allowed to 
keep it." 

Lalua took up the cocoanut, looked it over and 
under, peered in, and set it down with a smile. 

" In the island, strange things happen, some- 
time," she observed. 

" Why aren't you allowed to keep pearls? " asked 
Maiera abruptly. She spoke much better English 
than the Queen. 

" Oh," I stammered, suddenly embarrassed, " be- 
cause because Lorraine did not like me to take 
valuable presents It was always boys who sent 
them." 

" Well, no boy have sent dis. One I have give 
you, de other ah, well, dat is sorcery of Maiera, 
bad girl," remarked the Queen, entirely without 
emotion. " Maiera, if you had live fifty years ago, 
I t'ink dey have tied you in a canoe wit' a hole in it, 
and send you out to sea." 

" They are lovely lovely," I murmured, star- 
ing at the wonderful gems, so unlike any I had ever 
seen in my life. ("You wanted to know," said 
some inner voice, " what he would give, if ever 
he . . .") "But I don't know how I shall get 
them set." 

" Maiera, you will perhaps make more magic," 
said the Queen, leaning her head, with its short, 
curly hair, on her hand, and looking at me oddly. 

Maiera took the two gems, and disappeared. 
She was away some minutes. When she came back, 
the pearls were set. They had been circled round 
with very thick gold wire, and the wire had been 
bent into hooks. It was a barbaric, yet a beautiful 
arrangement. The wire was highly polished, and 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 167 

perfectly cold. Neither heat nor tool had been used 
in the task of setting. 

Take some gold wire, thick as a small quill; try 
to bend it, without heat or tools, without dimming 
the luster of its polish, into small delicate shapes, 
perfectly fashioned and tell me, when it is done, 
whether you would not prefer the well-known feats 
of tearing a pack of cards asunder, of bending an 
iron bar. But, unless your strength is as the 
strength of ten, do not try it at all. 

" How you like Maiera's magic? " asked the 
Queen, bending forward, her head still on her hand, 
her eyes full, brilliant eyes of the true South Sea 
type piercing me through. 

For answer, I put the earrings in my ears, sprang 
up from the floor with one movement, and ran out 
to the back of the house. There was no one, and 
nothing, there. It would have been just possible for 
some one mounted on a bicycle or some one on a 
horse or some one who ... I did not finish that 
... to gain the shelter of the palm grove behind 
the house, while I was crossing from one room to 
another. . . . 

" Magic," said Maiera's voice. 

" The sun is going down," I said. I felt 
strangely disappointed, almost chilled. These 
women were playing tricks on me. 

" It is time I got home," I said. " Lorraine 
will want me for my walk." I said good-by to La- 
lua, thanked her, more formally than I had yet 
done, for her many beautiful presents, and hurried 
back to the cottage among the bougainvillaeas. I 
took care to slip in by the back way, and to make no 
noise in gaining my room. There was just a chance 
that my absence might not have been observed. . . . 



1 68 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

At my door I was checked by the sound of some 
one moving about within. Had I been caught . . . 
I picked up a wrapper that was hanging on the ve- 
randa, and fled to the bathroom. A minute later, 
Lorraine came to the door. 

" Is that you inside there, Dara? " she called. 

' Yes," I answered her, splashing vigorously with 
my hands. 

' The Garstangs have called." 

" In a minute," I replied. I occupied the minute 
in taking off my outdoor clothes, and getting into 
the wrapper. With my hair down, and my face con- 
vincingly wet, I opened the door, and came out. 
" She will think," 'I said to myself, " that I was 
sleeping, and went for a bath when I woke up. . . ." 

Lorraine eyed me curiously. 

" What's the matter? " I asked her. " I sha'n't 
be a minute dressing. You know I always like a 
bath at this time." 

" Do you always," inquired Lorraine, " bathe 
with pearl earrings on ? " Then, without pausing for 
an answer, she walked away. 

" My God! " I said, clapping my hands to my 
ears. The great pink pearls were still there. 
" Now," I thought, " the fat will be in the fire." 
But it was not. When I came into the drawing 
room, earringless, my aunt did not so much as look 
at me. She was busy, apparently, talking to the 
family of the Resident. 

Later, when we passed each other on the ve- 
randa, she gave me a perfectly inexplicable look. If 
it had not been impossible, I should have said that 
something had happened, during the afternoon, to 
please her. . . . 

But her chaperonage was not lightened. She 
seemed to watch me, so to speak, with her teeth set, 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 169 

defying anything in heaven or earth to make her re- 
lax for a moment. 

A day or two later I do not quite know when 
I had a call from Maiera. In the Hawongas 
there is not the keen feeling about color that one 
finds in islands governed by Australia. New Zea- 
land, with her own Maori people, has never been 
over-sensitive in these matters. Colored wives of 
white men, legally married; half-castes of respect- 
able life ; the brown royalties of Hawonga all 
these were on our visiting lists in Port Hervey. I 
do not think that we, or the colored folk, were any 
the worse for it. 

Maiera, legal daughter of an island princess and 
an English sailor (both dead), had been brought up 
in the royal circle. She had been educated at a 
school in Tahiti, but had spent most of her life under 
Lalua's immediate care. She could read and write 
perfectly, play the piano, and was no mean artist 
with the pencil or the brush. She was exceedingly 
pretty more than pretty, indeed; she was, like 
many Eastern Island half-castes, beautiful. Her 
profile was singularly sharp and clear, like something 
on a coin; she had black silky hair that waved more 
deeply than any human hair I have ever seen, and 
eyelashes so long that one could hardly believe they 
were real. Her skin was the color of fresh cream. 
At the time of which I speak, she must have been 
about my own age, seventeen, but looked, and in all 
essentials was, quite twenty-five. 

She had hardly ever been to see me, and I felt 
pleased when she walked languishingly Maiera 
always seemed to move as if she were just going to 
dance down the long veranda where I was sitting, 
half-reclined on a Colombo chair, with a book in my 
hand, and a basket of mangoes beside me. They 



170 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

were Papeete mangoes, each as big as the crown of a 
hat, pale green, satiny, with a pink flush on each 
round cheek; they were cold from the ice chest, 
dead ripe, and smelt like heaven. 

Maiera greeted me courteously. 

" Ah, that is the first of the mangoes," she 
said, looking at my basket. " Lalua's are not yet 
ripe." 

The hint was too strong to be disregarded, even if 
I had wished. I asked her to have some; Maiera 
said they would soil her dress which was un- 
deniably true; if you are to enjoy a mango, you 
must eat it in your bath so people say or at 
least without regard for your clothing. It fol- 
lowed, naturally, that I invited her to come up to 
my bedroom, and leave her handsome robe of white 
silk and lace on my bed while she ate the fruit. Lor- 
raine, who was going briskly about her housekeeping, 
told a native boy to fetch us plates, knives, and 
spoons; and, with the mangoes, we retired to my 
room for one of those fruit orgies that island peo- 
ple know. I will allow that Maiera and I were sen- 
suous little beasts; but in the islands, one becomes 
greedy about fruit to an extent that English people 
can scarcely understand. 

Lalua's maid of honor had never been in my bed- 
room before. When we had finished all the man- 
goes, and had washed ourselves and put on our 
dresses again, she began roaming about and look- 
ing at my little treasures pictures, shells, bits of 
coral, photographs in silver frames. She stopped 
dead before one of Luke an old one, taken when 
he was only fifteen and began staring at it. 

" Ah, Heaven! " she cooed, " even then, he was 
a lovely boy; but now, he is So you are very, 
very much in love with him, little Dara, and soon 



you are to be married. When did you first fall in 
love?" 

" It was all all arranged," I stammered, 
" before I came to Hawonga." 

" But you were very young, my Dara," went on 
Maiera in her cooing voice. " No white girl falls 
in love so young." 

I stared at her; I was wax in her clever hands. 
She seemed to be a century older than I ; she seemed 
to have deep cisterns of wisdom at her command 
wisdom unguessed at, even, by me. I wondered 
how much she really knew. . . . 

" I'm getting my trousseau," was all that I could 
manage, in self-defense. " Wouldn't you like to see 
the things Lorraine has given me? " 

When two girls get together, there can be but one 
answer to such a question. We were deep, at once, 
in the contents of camphor-wood boxes embroid- 
ered silk wrappers from the Japanese store; deli- 
cate underlinen, ribboned and laced; shoes, nests of 
silk stockings set together like many-colored eggs. 
Some of the boxes were small; these held a variety 
of things jewelry, trinkets, letters. . . . 

" Ah, ah, ah ! " cried Maiera, snatching at a 
packet tied with a ribbon, and beginning to dance 
round the room. " I have his letters to you; what 
will you give me for them? " 

"Nothing; I'll slap you well," I cried, and be- 
gan chasing her. We ragged and romped all over 
the room for some time, and at last fell breathless 
on my bed together. The letters, all tumbled and 
disarranged, were in my hand. I valued them, 
partly as a Red Indian may value his chain of scalps, 
and partly because I was really fond of the writer. 
I tied them up again with their faded ribbon, notic- 
ing as I did so how much yellower the outer letter 



172 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

was than the white sheets within; and then I put 
them away in their box. 

Maiera seemed suddenly tired, now. She gave an 
unrestrained yawn or two, said it was too hot for all 
this romping, went to the glass, and rearranged her 
lovely hair. " I must be going home," she said. 
" Lalua will need me. Thank you, little Dara, for 
showing me your pretty things, and for giving me 
all those mangoes. No, I go by the window, it is 
the shortest way." And her silk robe fluttered 
down the garden walk, among the bougainvillaeas 
and the beds of white gardenia and tuberose, out 
of sight. 

' When did she go ? " asked Lorraine by and by. 

" Quite a while ago," I said. 

"What did she come for?" 

" Only to call." 

Dinah was stringing beans on another veranda, 
within hearing of Lorraine and myself. 

" Call indeed," she echoed, " I like her obesity." 
(Dinah never to my recollection troubled herself 
much about the meaning of a word, provided it had 
a good round ring.) "A black woman like her 
calling on my young lady. She didn't call for noth- 
ing, I'll lay. Did you miss anything of your jew- 
elry, Miss Dara? " 

" What nonsense you talk," I said. " Maiera 
has far more jewelry than I." 

" Then if she has, she has took something she 
hasn't got more of," opined Dinah. She stripped a 
bean viciously, as though it were Maiera. " I'd like 
to go through her clothes," she said. 

I, not approving of her tone, countered with the 
universal island question : 

" When do you think the steamer'll be in? " 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 173 

The steamer came next day. It was now nearly 
two weeks since Luke had left Hawonga, and there 
had been no news from Hiliwa Dara, though we had 
been able to send one mail. I knew, however, that 
it was possible to hear by the boat. This run she 
had to call at an island which was only fifty miles 
away from my old home an annual call, under- 
taken to bring and return native laborers and it 
would be easy to send the Hiliwa Dara cutter out 
to meet her. 

Lorraine, too, expected to hear of Luke. " I 
don't think he'll hurry back though," she said. 
' There has been more than carelessness with that 
overseer. Arthur was right always right 
when he said that absent plantation owners were an 
invitation to dishonesty." 

' Yes, father was right," I agreed. As a plan- 
tation owner myself, I pretended to as much knowl- 
edge as could easily be acquired on such subjects. I 
had seen, as every South Sea dweller has seen, again 
and again, the too familiar phenomenon of the plan- 
tation manager who gives himself the airs of a 
proprietor; who lives in a two-thousand-pound style 
on a five-hundred-pound salary, and keeps, neverthe- 
less, on strangely friendly terms with the stores. I 
know the tales about palms that did not produce, 
and plantation machinery that broke down and had 
to be replaced, and mythical cases of benzine used on 
mythical runs. . . . The parable of the unjust stew- 
ard finds acceptance, in a too-literal sense, all over 
the Pacific world, where distances are long and mails 
are few, and the standard of honesty never very 
high. 

So I was not surprised when the mail came in, 
and among the letters fetched from the post office 
by Dinah who never would trust any one but her- 



174 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

self with this duty was one written by Luke, and 
dated from Hiliwa Dara, saying that he had found 
things in a very bad state indeed, and was even con- 
sidering whether it was not a case for prosecution. 
In any case, all the books had to be gone into thor- 
oughly, all the correspondence overhauled, and many 
investigations made. He could not hope to return 
to the Hawongas before another month. 

This letter was addressed to Lorraine. It men- 
tioned another, written to myself. We immediately 
began hunting for it in the pile of correspondence, 
found it and found also a third. Luke had ap- 
parently written to me twice. One letter, like Lor- 
raine's, was on the Hiliwa Dara note, the other, 
which was very thick, was enclosed in an ordinary 
gray envelope such as I supposed the delinquent 
overseer might have had. 

I have all my life been clairvoyant about letters. 
It is not a very uncommon gift, and I make no boast 
of it; though I have a special reason for mention- 
ing it here. Like you, and other people, I could 
often feel the tenor of a letter before I had opened 
it. I have felt the rush and uplift of good news 
long before my eyes fell upon it. I have felt my 
heart sink like a stone at the touch of some evil 
happening not yet learned by my conscious mind. 
But when I took the thick, second letter in my hand, 
I was not aware of any feeling about it. I could 
not " read " it through the envelope. For a mo- 
ment, I almost fancied that Luke had enclosed some 
papers about the plantation some indifferent 
thing or other in a cover, and sent them to me, in 
addition to his usual letter. But I remembered that 
business matters would have been sent as appar- 
ently they had been to Lorraine. 

I had never been in the habit of pocketing Luke's 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 175 

letters, and running away to enjoy them in secret. 
You other girls with lovers will think this significant. 
Perhaps it was I don't know. At all events, I 
proceeded to open my two letters, immediately after 
Lorraine had read hers. 

The first had been written as soon as he ar- 
rived. It was full of the accounts of his doings, 
plans, ideas in the matter of the plantation; business 
details were left out, but many personal ones in- 
cluded. He spoke a little of the house, and what he 
meant to do with it " by and by." He hinted, de- 
lightedly, at a secret he had, which would soon be no 
secret at all, and which was going to make both of 
us rich; much richer than my father, or old Ivory, 
had ever guessed. The letter ended with the usual 
expressions of kindness and of love; no less, no 
more. I folded it and put it away; it aroused in me 
no emotions whatever. 

But the second 

I had hardly read six lines before I knew what it 
was. I was sitting, but I sprang to my feet, and 
continued to read, standing. As I turned the first 
page, and came upon the second and third, I began 
to walk up and down the room, reading as I went. 
I saw Lorraine and Dinah watching me, amazed. 

... I finished the sheets, crushed them up in my 
hand, and flung them at Lorraine. They struck her 
in the face. I don't know even now why I did it. 
It seems impossible that I could have guessed at any- 
thing . . . then . . . 

" Luke has thrown me over," I said, and ran out 
of the room. I saw, as I went, that Dinah and 
Lorraine were gathering up the sheets of the letter, 
scattered by my hand, and putting them together. 

" Read it," I cried. " Send it round the town 
and show it if you like. He's jilted me." 



i;6 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

It was twelve o'clock, and hot as only a December 
morning of the tropics can be. I do not know how 
I escaped sunstroke, running hatless as I did through 
the town, by alleys and back gardens, so as not to be 
seen; reaching the palace of Queen Lalua breathless, 
perspiring, with my coils of copper hair so heated by 
the strong overhead sun that they almost scorched 
my fingers when I felt at the sides of my head, to 
see if my earrings had not fallen out, in that wild 
rush. I remembered my earrings, my rose-pearl 
earrings, as a drowning man may, dimly, remember 
the belt of gold that clasps his waist, even while he 
is sinking into unknown depths. Little though I 
knew it, those earrings were enacting the part of 
the belt of gold. It was they that were dragging 
me down into the maelstrom. 

I was furious and despairing. There might have 
been a thread of some very different emotion at the 
bottom of my mind, indeed, I am sure there was 
but for the moment it was buried; and I could only 
realize that my Luke, my property, the boy who 
had solemnly promised himself to me, the youth 
who asked nothing better than to devote his life to 
caring for little Dara, had abandoned his trust; had 
thrown away that which, only two short weeks ago, 
seemed of all things upon earth most precious to 
him. In all my life my vanity, my pride of a pretty 
girl, had never received such a shock. Whatever I 
might feel, I had been as certain of his feeling as 
of the stars that watched above the earth. 

Lalua the Queen, when I burst into the cool reed 
house that stood beneath the shadow of the palace, 
was dining. A chicken lay on a large green leaf 
before her; a heap of custard apples and mangoes 
was piled up in a delicate Niue basket at her side. 
Even in that moment I recognized, with some aston- 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 177 

ishment, that the mangoes were Lalua's own, from 
her great garden the finest in Hawonga; the man- 
goes that yesterday had not been ripe . . . 
But these were dead ripe, every one ! 

I had no time, even if I had had the inclination, 
to puzzle over trifles of the kind. 

Lalua rose and, providently taking a chicken leg 
in one hand, motioned me with the other to the inner 
chamber, where her great bed, with its silk and vel- 
vet quilt of a thousand patches, was the only piece 
of furniture. It was pleasantly dusk in there; the 
only light that there was came sifted through walls 
of woven cane, save where the doorways made two 
oblongs filled with white-hot sun and sea. There 
was no sound save the dying whisper of the reef at 
far low tide, and of humming green-tressed iron- 
woods that sighed and sang, as they always do day 
in, day out, in that creamy South Sea world. 

" Of old, unhappy, far-off things . . ." 

I flung myself on the bed. Lalua had known I 
would, Lalua had read what the matter was, before 
I was fairly up her veranda steps. 

" Luke has thrown me over," I said for the sec- 
ond time. And I began to cry. Anger was dying 
down, but beyond words I was hurt, humiliated. 

Maiera came in from the back of the house. She 
sat down on the floor, waving her plaited fan. 

" Tell the Queen and me," she said. " Tell us 
everything." 

Lalua, thoughtfully nibbling her chicken bone, had 
seated herself on the mats beside Maiera. 

" I haven't the letter," I said, wiping my eyes. 
"But " 

"Who has it? "asked Lalua. 

" Lorraine Dinah I don't know. It doesn't 



178 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

matter. It is a long letter, but it just means one 
thing that I haven't turned out as he thought I 
would, and he declines to carry out his to 
marry me. Oh, he doesn't want to have anything 
more to do with me. Of course he could if he 
liked; it was aranged so but I never thought." 

" How you mean, arranged? " asked Lalua, bend- 
ing forward. Her brief black curls, gray-sprinkled, 
fell upon her neck. Her eyes were shadowed; I 
could not see them. 

" Well, as he's spoken of it and rejected it 
I shall speak too, because the oath has been broken," 
I declared. And sitting up, my tears forgotten for 
the moment, I told them the whole tale of the 
strange wedding at Hiliwa Dara, six years ago. 

When I had finished, Lalua the Queen got up 
from the floor, and leaned across the bed, to laugh 
loudly and at her ease. Maiera, young and supple, 
flung herself prone on the mats, and rolled in an 
ecstasy of mirth. They exchanged a few words in 
some island tongue that I did not know, and laughed 
still more. . . . 

Somehow, they made me understand why it was 
that old Ivory had exacted that oath on the Bible 
that seemed to me so foolish nearly six years ago. 
I did not like their bearing I did not know why. 

Lalua saw. She sobered down, with another 
word or two to Maiera. 

" Foolish, foolish little girl ! " she said to me. 
" Dat was only play. Dat was to make sure you 
marry Luke Ivory some day or oder. No law in 
dat." 

" Are you sure you know? " I asked dubiously. 

Lalua, who was standing now, drew herself up to 
her full six feet. 

" I, Queen of Hawonga all my life, and not to 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 179 

know de law? " she said. " Not my law, dat one, 
true; but I know him. When de Englis' take my 
country from me, dey make deir own law. Not so 
good as mine. New Zealan', she take de country 
again, and make anoder law; still not a good law, 
but I know him. No white women marry if she 
not sixteen year old, Englis' law, New Zealan' law." 

"But!" I objected, remembering dimly some- 
thing long forgotten, " they said it had been regis- 
tered at Hawonga. I did wonder why nobody knew 
anything about it, if it was." 

Lalua and Maiera looked at one another. 

' When de New Zealanders took my country 
from de Englis'," said Lalua, " dey take de old 
register, and keep him in Wellington ; den dey make 
new one demselves." 

' That is how it has happened," agreed Maiera. 
" But it was no good registering it anyhow, my 
Dara. You are no more married than I am." 

" Never were you," proclaimed Lalua. " I, La- 
lua Queen, say it." 

" Ajiyhow," I said, bursting into tears again, " he 
has thrown me over, and it is the meanest thing I 
ever heard of in my life, though he says it is for my 
good and my happiness." 

" Oh, you little fool! " cried Maiera, springing to 
her feet, and standing erect in the patch of fierce 
light that slanted in from the door, " you are as 
blind as a flying fox that flies in the daytime. La- 
lua, this one knows nothing, for all she has lived in 
a Love Island five years. She doesn't know what a 
man means when he says he is giving up a girl for 
her own good." 

' What does he mean? " I asked wonderingly. 

1 Tell her," said Maiera to the Queen. 

" Always," chanted Lalua, in the sing-song tone 



i8o MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

she used when speaking seriously, " always, he mean 
anoder girl." 

"Oh! ' I screamed. 

" She's no girl, anyhow," said Maiera, lighting a 
cigarette. " Better have one, Dara, you want it." 

"What do you mean?" I asked her, stretching 
out my hand for the cigarette. I did indeed want 
it badly. 

" By saying she's no girl! I mean truth. She's 
old enough to be his mother." 

" Oh you don't mean you don't mean 
Lorraine ? " 

" Who else? " was Maiera's contemptuous reply. 
" She fell in love with him the minute she saw him. 
So did that little fool Mabelle but he never no- 
ticed her. . . . Didn't you hear how he said good-by 
to Lorraine? Didn't you see how she made him 
dance with her? And she " 

" She getting old," sing-songed Lalua. " When 
a woman getting old, she like the young man wit' 
blue eyes. She like him good. Luke Ivory, young 
and good and blue eye, Lorraine she love him. 1 
t'ink she have been writing to him. Man he good 
and very, very young, he like woman like Lorraine, 
all fire. You very, very pretty, Dara, but you no fire. 
He forget you very quick, if he see Lorraine want- 
ing him." 

" It seems quite clear to me, my Dara," com- 
mented Maiera, puffing slowly at her cigarette. 
"Why do you trouble? You don't love Luke 
Ivory. You read his letters before every one. 
You keep them in a bundle and never open them 
Ah, I saw the outside one was all yellow, and the in- 
side ones were white! Why do you mind? " 

"I don't mind!" I cried, clenching my hands. 
" I don't mind, but I but I -" 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 181 

" You want to make him mind," finished Maiera 
for me, as if the desire was almost too natural and 
obvious to need mentioning. " What will you give 
me, little Dara, if I tell you how to break his heart 
in pieces, and make him eat dirt for shame? " 

" I don't know," I said, my voice sinking. I was 
tired out. I did not quite like her tone. 

Lalua the Queen saw it. 

" You shall get on this bed again, and you shall 
go to sleep," she pronounced. " I will make de 
magic, and you sleep as if you are drowned at de 
bottom of de sea." 

Lalua's magic was nothing more than mesmeric 
passes and touches, but she was, it seemed, a mis- 
tress of the art. I slept almost at once. Late in 
the day I woke, refreshed and steadied, ready to go 
home, and even to meet Lorraine. 

" Do not let her know," counseled Maiera. 
" She will acknowledge nothing. She will try and 
make you think she is sorry for you. Tell her no 
more than you have told. And " 

She bent over to whisper to me : 

" To-night, when the moon is down, come here." 



CHAPTER X 

FOUND Lorraine on the cool north side of the 
* veranda, sitting under the shade of a climbing 
passion-fruit vine. It was late in the afternoon; 
the dropping sun shot through the tapestry of leaf- 
age, turning it wine-yellow, and lighting up the rip- 
ened fruit into necklaces of gems, egg-shaped, ame- 
thyst-colored. Lorraine, against this background 
of splendor, looked less somber than was her wont. 
I noticed, with eyes made suddenly keen, that her 
dress was not all black; I remembered that of late 
it very seldom had been. To-day, it was so gauzy 
and light in texture that it showed the white under- 
slip clearly; in its substance there were little flowers 
of green, and the underskirt was threaded with vivid 
green ribbon. She had another green ribbon wound 
through the tower of her dark hair. 

I had come upon her suddenly; she was not pre- 
pared. For an instant, before the shutter of her re- 
serve swung to, I caught a glimpse of what she was 
thinking, feeling, doing, alone there on the quiet 
veranda, on the day that had seen Luke's unlooked- 
for desertion of me. 

She was thinking pleasant things, with her lips 
apart and soft, as the lips of one who dreams. She 
was singing a little, sweet sad song, quietly, to her- 
self. She was doing the most amazing thing that 
Lorraine had ever done, in my lifelong knowledge 
of her nothing at all. 

My aunt, I think, had been educated after a 
somewhat old-fashioned pattern, and was a little 

182 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 183 

behind the times in which she lived. Duty, re- 
straint, reserve, had been the watchwords of her 
youth ; industry an industry that seemed to me, 
the child of a later time, almost insane was her 
eleventh commandment. She never read or let me 
read novels of a morning (to this day, so strong is 
the effect of her training, I cannot enjoy a pleasant 
book until after lunch) . She never showed her feel- 
ings, if she could help it. She never sat unemployed 
unless when she was talking to or entertaining 
some one; and in that case, as often as not, she 
would pull a bit of embroidery out of her pocket, 
and work at it while talking. The embroidery 
might be no good to any created being; the empty 
hours before twelve which she filled up gardening, or 
piano-playing, might just as well have been employed 
reading some masterpiece of fiction. But those 
were Lorraine's principles, and principles were to 
her as the tables of stone to Moses sacred things, 
not to be broken without fear of grave disaster. . . . 

Now, to-day, one at least of Lorraine's stone ta- 
bles lay shivered at her feet. She was lounging, 
lazing, and idling; she was actually dreaming. . . . 
" The habit of dreaming," I had often heard her 
say, " eats into the roots of self-control. . . ." 

I stood at the top of the veranda steps, and re- 
garded her with critical, hard eyes. She felt them. 
She looked up. 

Down went the blind; she sat straight up in her 
chair. 

" Where have you been? " she said. 

But the governess bond was broken. I stood 
where I was at the top of the steps, and looked her 
in the eyes, coolly, as I had never looked at Lor- 
raine, before I answered: 

" Where I chose to go." 



1 84 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

There was a moment's silence. Battles are 
fought in such moments; campaigns are lost and 
won. 

Lorraine, as I have said, was cleverer than I. 
She saw her defeat instantly; more, she saw its cause 
the cause that could never be mentioned between 
us two. . . . With the grace that was always char- 
acteristic of her, she swept out of a difficult position, 
and resumed the small portion of authority now 
tenable. 

" My dear child," she said, " you have burned 
your face to a cinder; do go at once and put on some 
white-rose cream." 

" It's not only sun," I said calmly. " Some of it 
is crying. I've been crying out. I've done. I 
don't mean to cry any more." 

"No?" said Lorraine, watching me behind the 
shutters of her cool reserve. " Did Luke mean so 
little to you ? " 

" It doesn't matter what he meant or didn't mean, 
when he has behaved like that," I said. 

" It is strange," said Lorraine musingly. " It 
does not seem just like him. . . . I'm afraid you 
must have hurt his feelings rather badly, Dara, 
somehow or other." 

" If I did, he took some time to find it out," I 
answered her. That fact had hurt me more than 
anything. If he had dashed off a hasty letter, in a 
fit of jealousy but to write as usual, and then, on 
cool consideration, to reverse what he had said, and 
retire from the position ! No, one could not be ex- 
pected to take such an insult meekly. 

I could see her hunting in her mind for rea- 
sons. I could see her catch sight of one possible 
reason half hidden in a thicket of perhapses and 
maybes. . . . 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 185 

"Let her!" I thought scornfully. "And let 
him. They're both fools enough." 

I went to my room. It did not seem the room 
that I had left that morning; things did not look the 
same. A young, silly girl had lived in that room. 
I was so much older than she. . . . 

It was going on towards evening now; from the 
breast of the lagoon a little cold sunset wind came 
creeping, creeping, up to my veranda. It smelled 
of the open sea. The open sea ! Oh, word of 
magic! Think of your magic word, and what it 
has meant to you. " The open sea " was mine. 

I stood in the middle of the room, and my pulses 
seemed to shake my body, from shoe sole up to hair. 

" To-night," I said to myself. And again, as if it 
were a spell to raise some spirit of water or of wind 
" The open sea "... 



The moon, that had been high and full on the 
night of the Residency dance, was now in her last 
half. Not till near morning did that tired, waning 
light lift over the crests of the pale green island hills. 
I knew, of course, as Pacific folk do know, just 
where she was on her journey, and I went to bed 
very early, so as to be sure of waking up at the 
right time, late in the night, towards morning. 

I roused myself without difficulty from a chaos of 
wild dreams, as soon as the tired light came creep- 
ing through my mosquito net, low down where the 
dawn would break in another hour or two. I put on 
my black frock a dance dress of fine lace and 
wrapped my bright, betraying head, and white shoul- 
ders, in a black silk scarf. My shoes I took in my 
hand. They were high-heeled, and far from silent. 
I could have worn flat tennis shoes, but I would 



1 86 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

rather have died that night. Perhaps some girl 
who reads this may guess why. 

As a finish to my toilette, I took a small carving 
knife from the kitchen, and stuck it in the satin belt 
of my dress. I knew Hawonga too well to trust 
myself alone on her love-perfumed highways, at 
night, without some such protection. 

White shadows passed me in the moon-streaked 
twilight as I slipped, shoeless, veiled, along the thick 
dust of the roadway, that still kept its daytime heat. 
The scent of crushed tiere flowers, worn by all island 
girls, came now and then from some dusk opening 
among the trees. I seemed to have slipped back 
centuries aeons of time from my daytime self, 
Lorraine's restrained, calm pupil. This was my 
country, so I thought, as I sped silently forward, 
safe under the dark dress and disguising veil this 
dim, starlight, moonlight world, full of delicate, 
cold scents, and elfin colors. Why could one not 
live in it all the time? It was there all the time, 
though one might, foolishly, choose to live in the 
twin, hateful world of day. Its very names were 
haunting . . . " Midnight," " moonlight," " the 
stars." ... If such a world were open to one once 
in ten five years, how eagerly one would grasp 
the chance of visiting it! And yet it was there all 
the time, and one spent the hours of entrance to that 
magic realm in brutish, foolish sleep. 

All this, I was certain, no one had ever thought 
before. That the night-wandering self which I had 
just discovered was so old a discovery as to have its 
own full cycle of legends and literature, I never 
guessed. One does not, at seventeen. 

When I came to the house by the palace of the 
Queen, it was all lit up. This did not much sur- 
prise me ; island folk go by no clock but that of their 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 187 

own inclinations. Probably Lalua had not yet been 
to bed, and did not intend going till the sun rose. 
Still, I thought the amount of lighting was a little 
bit out of the common; instead of the usual, sole 
hurricane lamp, there were a score or two of brown 
cocoanut shells, filled with cocoanut oil, and floating 
each a wick of plaited wild cotton. These were set 
about the rails of the veranda, and tied to the door- 
posts. There were palm leaves, too, fastened up- 
right to the pillars of the house. 

" Something is going on," I thought. I pulled 
the scarf off my head, and paused a moment at the 
door to smooth my hair, put on my shoes, and placed 
a cluster of star-white stephanotis, plucked from the 
side of the house, behind each ear. I took care to 
adjust the flowers so as not to hide my earrings 
my wonderful new earrings, which (of course) La- 
lua the Queen had given me. If you ask me 
whether I knew the significance of flowers so worn, 
I will answer perfectly. A flower behind each 
ear means: "I have a lover, and I am going to 
meet him." . . . 

I say that I knew this, but I persuaded myself 
that I did not; or, at any rate, that nobody would 
suppose I did; or finally, if any one did suppose so, 
that the custom could not be held to apply to white 
people. . . . 

Inside Queen Lalua's house, upon the fine mats of 
her floor, were seated all the kings and queens of 
Hawonga. 

There were several of them kings of the outer 
islands, who lived for the most part at Port Her- 
vey, because the salary paid them by Government, as 
a sop to wounded pride of royalty, was more quickly 
and agreeably spent there queens of the other 
side of Hawonga, two of them, sub-queens to Lalua, 



1 88 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

as one might say; a visiting king from another Pa- 
cific group, who had come up by the last steamer; a 
princess or so; Maiera, and Lalua herself. 

They were all sitting round Lalua's immense kava 
bowl, cut out of a single tree trunk, which was the 
pride of the Hawongas. Tourists invariably 
wanted to buy it; some had been known to offer as 
much as ten shillings for it. Lalua would not have 
taken a diamond necklace for the dark, polished 
basin, four feet across, standing on a forest of small 
legs, and lined with the lovely, inimitable oyster- 
blue enamel that comes only of a hundred years or 
so of kava-making and holding. She never had it 
out save on great occasions. This was clearly one. 

I supposed, at first, that they were waiting for 
me. All the kings and queens were sitting cross- 
legged, their limbs folded up in the graceful native 
way that is so impossible to whites; their skirts and 
tunics of rich silk, their nightdress robes of velvet 
making a splendor of scarlet and yellow and emerald 
on the dusky brown of the mats. They were not 
talking at all, and no one had yet begun to pound 
the immense kava root that stood leaning against 
the wall. Kava is pounded, not chewed, in the Ha- 
wongas, and has been so from time immemorial. 

I took my seat on the mats, folding my limbs as 
neatly as I could, and bowing to the silent company. 
Some of them bowed in return, holding on their 
crowns as they did so. Lalua merely smiled. She 
had more sense of dignity. 

Maiera got up and dropped down behind me. 
She looked wonderfully well that night. Her robe, 
long and loose and very flimsy, was made of ge- 
ranium-colored stuff edged with gold. She had a 
wreath of scarlet double hibiscus in her hair. I 
think she must have poured quite half a bottle of del- 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 189 

icate jasmine scent over her head; but the concert 
of violent perfumes that rose from the assembled 
royalties opoponac, musk, bergamot, jockey club, 
new-mown hay almost extinguished its one finer 
note. 

" I am going to make the kava," she said. 
" You shall have the second cup to-night." 

"Who will have the third?" I asked; for the 
third is the cup of honor. 

" I don't know," said Maiera, smiling a dazzling 
smile. I understood this to mean that she would 
not tell. . . . 

It was clear that she was to be the kava-maker; 
her sleeves had been rolled up to the shoulder, and 
fastened in place with a couple of gold brooches. 
Maiera had wonderful arms, like most of the island 
girls; and she knew like all the island girls 
how to make the most of their grace in the exqui- 
sitely graceful act of kava-making. 

We sat still, and waited. In an assemblage of 
white people some one would have " made conver- 
sation," talked about the weather, the steamers; 
said things that every one knew, and listened to 
things that no one wanted to hear. These Hawon- 
gan kings and queens sat in silence. The soft, 
winking light of the cocoanut lamps shook on the 
folds of their satin and velvet robes; on their un- 
moving, shining, dark-brown eyes. I wondered, as 
I had often wondered before, what was the secret 
that these South Sea people knew; what gave 
them, in an unpeaceful world, their incomparable 
peace. . . . 

Outside, in the moonlight, the tide was coming in. 
I heard each wave spill on the coral sand, a little 
higher, a little louder than the last. My heart went 
with the tide; it has always done so; I think it al- 



190 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

ways will. Always, I shall feel the pulse of life rise 
with the gladness of the making tide; sink low and 
quiet, as the seas draw home. I am very sure that I 
shall die of a neap-tide night, when the waves have 
drawn back to the utmost verge of the reef, and 
pause, in darkness, and in silence, holding their 
breath. . . . Such hours, I think, were meant for 
people to die in. 

But the joys of life; the moments that ring, like 
golden bells, through half a century of after years 
these, to me, have been borne, always, on the 
crests of the rising tide. 

The tide was coming in ... I heard it, and I 
knew, as clearly as if the free, triumphant waves had 
spoken in words, what they were bringing to me. 

There was a stir among the silent kings and 
queens; a rustling of their robes; a turning towards 
the doorway. A shadow blotted the moonlight; 
there was only one shadow in Hawonga so tall. A 
foot came over the threshold; there was only one 
foot in the islands so swift and so light. 

" lorana ! " said the one voice in the world. 

"lorana! (hail!) Engelandi!" answered, in 
chorus, all the kings and queens. 

Somehow, I do not know how, a gap was made 
beside me on the floor, and Captain England sat 
down in it. He carried his peaked, white-covered 
sailor's cap in one hand; he had on a white, gold- 
buttoned suit; the brilliant ribbons and the bright 
silver of his war medals shone upon his breast. A 
moment before, I would have thought it impossible 
that I should sit calmly thus beside him. I would 
have pictured myself hiding running away agi- 
tated, at the least, beyond possibility of concealment. 
But when he sat down there, it seemed, suddenly, 
the most natural thing in the world. And when he 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 191 

said, " Good evening, Dara," I answered, " Good 
evening," as if we had spent the last five years meet- 
ing each other every day. 

It was clear that some ceremony was intended, 
with which the satin and velvet dresses, and the per- 
fumes, and the kava bowl, all had to do. Lalua be- 
gan it by emptying a quarter of a pint of musk over 
England's immaculate suit and perfectly brushed 
hair. I had never seen his hair so close before. 
It astonished me to see how dense it was silky 
and fine in fiber, but thick as an animal's fur. La- 
lua's scent ruffled it all up, and spotted the starch 
of his coat; but he endured the infliction coolly, 
though I saw him wrinkle his nostrils a little, as the 
full blast of scent struck them. Absurdly, I wanted 
to protect him from the scent ... to protect 
Harry England, the hawk of the South Seas ! 

A girl is as much of a woman at seventeen as 
she will be at twenty-seven, although in these days 
of late marriages a thing unrecognized by the 
natural scheme of the world we are in danger of 
forgetting what our grandparents well knew. Eng- 
land was two and thirty, a soldier, a sea captain, a 
rover and adventurer, tough as teakwood, and 
strong as a buffalo; yet I knew, instinctively, that in 
some ways I could, and should, be his protector, even 
as he could in a thousand other ways be mine. So 
does one learn love, in a Love Island. 

Round England's neck they threw a wreath of 
something that looked like scarlet feathers, and was 
in reality scarlet berries, split into long strips. This 
was as thick as a lady's boa; it had a strong scent 
of its own, and was in addition deluged with ylang- 
ylang. Then Maiera produced a crown of pome- 
granate flowers, close, neat, vermilion-colored, and 
set it on his head. He took it all quite gravely, ex- 



192 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

cept when the cool, dew-wet flowers descended on 
his hair; then he laughed a little, and looked at me 
out of the corners of long, mischievous eyes. ... I 
was astonishingly pleased to guess, as I did, that he 
felt a little ridiculous, and was trying to find out if 
I thought so too. It made him so much more 
human. 

As a fact, the close, scarlet wreath made him look 
like a Roman gladiator, and was suitable in the last 
degree to his dark, masculine .features for in 
spite of hard jaw and jutting nose, he had looks not 
to be despised. Lalua cast him a glance hard to 
translate liking regret I know not what. 
She turned to Maiera. 

" Kava now," she said. A boy, hitherto invisible, 
took the great root outside, and began pounding it 
with two stones. 

' Who's kava-maker? " asked England. Then, 
before Lalua could answer (we all knew, of course, 
that it was the unmarried Maiera's office) " Dara, 
don't you know how ? What about you ? " 

Oh, the significance of the looks that passed 
among the kings and queens ! But never a word 
was said. 

I rolled up my sleeves to the shoulder. England 
produced a couple of pins (when is a sailor found 
without a pin?) and deftly pinned them for me. 
Maiera pushed the kava bowl across to me with a 
vicious shove. She had already prepared her dress; 
and she knew well that no arm in Hawonga was a 
match for hers, save only the two over which I had 
just fastened up my sleeves. Maiera liked making 
kava, and showing her lovely arms in the turns and 
poses of the ceremony. She did not like watching 
another girl surpass her on her own ground. 

No one, however, took any notice of her disap- 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 193 

pointment. They were all occupied in watching a 
white girl perform the ceremony; all determined 
to be " down on " any slip. . . . 

I made none. I took the pounded kava, poured 
on the water, and drew the bibiscus-fiber strainer 
through it again and again, flinging the strainer over 
my shoulder when the drink was ready. I handed 
the first shell-full to Lalua, calling out her name; 
she clapped her hands, drank, and sent the bowl 
spinning back teetotum fashion across the mat to me. 
I called out my own name, drank the second bowl, 
and filled the third. Then there was a pause. The 
third, in Hawonga, is the royal bowl; if Lalua had 
forgone her rights for that evening, there was surely 
some weighty reason for it. 

" Engelandi," said a whisper somewhere. 

" England," I intoned, rising and giving the bowl 
to my neighbor with a curtsey for the royal bowl 
must be given by the kava-maker standing, bent 
double. The captain clapped his hands, and drank. 
And while the bowl was at his lips, the whole body 
of kings and queens burst out into a cry of " Enge- 
landi. Te Ariki Rorona!" (England, the Chief 
of Rorona.) 

The ceremony was explained. I had heard of 
Rorona; it was a far-out island, belonging to two 
or three different kings, and carrying with it the 
honor of a royal title. England had bought it, and 
in consequence had been formally admitted that 
night to the ranks of the island royalties. Some 
white men would have despised the distinction. 
Harry England did not; he knew its value, to a 
schooner captain and trader. 

The royalties now settled back comfortably on 
the floor and began to look about them. Appar- 
ently the event was over. 



194 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

But there was more to come. 

Harry England had not, like Lalua and myself, 
drained the cocoanut shell, though island custom de- 
manded it. He now held up his shell and showed 
that it was half full. 

" Maiera! " he commanded. 

Maiera, from her seat on the other side of the 
circle, came, somewhat unwillingly, but without de- 
lay. I think folk seldom delayed when Harry Eng- 
land spoke. 

" Give this," he said, " to the Queen of Rorona." 

Maiera, bending double, came and stood before 
me, and held out the bowl. And I knew that my 
fate in life, for all the sixty years or so that perhaps 
remained to me, depended on whether I took the 
bowl or not, for according to Hawongan custom the 
sharing of the kava bowl means betrothal. It was 
a strange way of making an offer of marriage - but 
Harry England did nothing like other men. 

I have been shaken almost to faintness, in my life, 
by things of small importance by fear of a thun- 
derstorm, by anxiety over some small event or plan; 
by news suddenly received, good or bad. I have 
stammered before visitors in a drawing-room; have 
been dumb when asked if I would go riding or driv- 
ing, because I could not make up my mind on the 
question; have said what I did not mean, meant what 
I did not say, because, in some small emergency of 
social life, my tongue and my presence of mind 
failed me. But that night, before the kings and 
queens of Hawonga, with the fate of all my after 
days hanging on one word, one action with a 
thousand warnings ringing in my ears, and a thou- 
sand fears in ambush, ready to leap out upon me 
I hesitated not an instant. I took the kava cup 
from Maiera's hand, and drank it to the last white 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 195 

drop. I set it on the mat again, and called out, 
Hawonga fashion, " Engelandi ! " 

And in another moment his hand was in mine, 
clasped as if it never would let go again. 

You should have heard the kings and queens cheer- 
ing you should have seen Kaviki of the Turtle 
Cays jump up and slap Harry England on the back, 
and Merana, Queen of Aivei (she was young and 
large-eyed and long of hair) spring from the mats. 
I think to kiss the King of Rorona, in her excitement, 
only her fat old husband, Prince Consort Lukuo, 
pulled her back by the tail of her gown, and caused 
her to sit suddenly and violently down again. . . . 
And then it was for Maiera to resume her office that 
had been usurped, and with many bendings of beau- 
tiful wrists, and turnings outward of dimpled el- 
bows, to serve kava to all the rest of the kings and 
queens. And as kava, moderately taken, makes for 
talkativeness, even as, immoderately drunk, it para- 
lyzes the limbs, leaving the drinker unable to walk 
without assistance, the talk ran high and gay and 
noisy for an hour or so. And Harry England sat 
with my hand in his, and never let it go, until, of a 
sudden, as it seemed, the moon was down and the 
sea below the veranda showed pink as the inside of 
a shell, and the coral beach was gray in the coming 
dawn. 

Then he rose, and helped me to rise, and told La- 
lua that she must come with us to see me home. 
Lalua nodded wisely. 

" Good," she said. 

We went out into the ivory dawn light, and 
through the silent, flowery lanes and roadways; and 
it was as if, to me, the gates of Paradise had been 
unlocked, and I was walking among the blooms of 
Eden and beside the Tree of Life. 



ig6 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

At the gateway of our house, where the climbing 
fires of bougainvillaea were beginning to burn redly 
in the sun, Harry England paused to take my left 
hand in both of his, and slip off the little forget-me- 
not ring and the half hoop of aquamarines. I had 
forgotten all about them, during the storms of yes- 
terday; they were so much a part of my hand that I 
never remembered whether I had them on or not. 

Some way from our gate the sea ran into the land 
in a sudden curve, making a narrow bay, surrounded 
by high cliffs. At all stages of the tide, this bay was 
floored with water, fathomless, black-blue. The 
captain eyed the distance and, with a mighty shot, 
flung out the two rings in a whistling curve. They 
rose, sank, and went down below the edge of the 
cliff. 

" Just a moment. Stand still! " he said, and his 
hands were busy with my earrings; first one side, 
then the other. I heard him draw his breath 
quickly, once, twice. " You'll want a blacksmith to 
set you free from that," he said. . . . 

Lalua looked aside, as we parted. 

A minute later, I was in my own room, staring 
at my face in the glass, and wishing I could cut out 
with a knife, or burn with a red-hot iron, the place 
on my lips where another man, before my lover, had 
kissed. 

And the great pink pearls were fastened to my 
ears by the closing of the heavy gold setting, so that, 
as Harry England said, nothing but a blacksmith's 
tools could have set me free. 

Our wedding was arranged for the next week but 
one. 

Lorraine, formally asked for her consent by Eng- 
land himself, in the course of a proper afternoon 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 197 

call, had given it without much cavil. She had made 
an objection or two, plain-spoken enough; and she 
had not asked me to leave the room before she made 
them. England had answered all she said, gravely 
and calmly. It was true, he allowed, that the Queen 
of the Islands had been partly run by handsome 
young native girls, some years before. It was not 
true now; it would not be again. It was true that 
he had killed more than one man in fair fight. 
He could not, he said, see the difference between 
that and the things they had given him bits of rib- 
bon for, over on the other side of the world. A 
fight was a fight; and that was all there was to it. 
It was not altogether true that he had broken and 
oppressed one trader after another who incurred his 
ill will, or got in the way of his business. He had 
certainly not run his affairs on philanthropic prin- 
ciples ; he did not know any one who did. The un- 
der dog always yelped; it was his privilege to do so. 

As regarded his own prospects, they were very 
fair. He had just bought Rorona, a fine island 
out beyond the group, halfway to Tahiti, and he 
proposed living there; had had part of it for some 
years; it was a nice property. Yes, he knew I 
owned half of Hiliwa Dara; he thought the best 
thing I could do was to sell out to Luke. . . . Yes, 
Luke had an extraordinary objection to him, but he 
did not know that he was called on to consider that. 
He had heard about Luke's letter. Was there any- 
thing else Miss Hamilton wished to ask? 

Miss Hamilton had nothing else to ask. She 
said, gracefully, but clearly enough, that she did not 
altogether approve of the marriage. However, she 
did not suppose much good would be done by refus- 
ing the consent that she, as legal guardian, had to 
give. 



i 9 8 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

" Not much," was England's quiet comment. In 
that one polite sentence, I think, she had asked him 
if he meant to carry me off, should she refuse her 
consent; in his brief reply, he had informed her that 
he certainly would. They were worthy of one an- 
other, those two. I have sometimes wondered why 
they never fell in love. It would have been a mat- 
ing of two tigers. . . . 

But if Lorraine had nothing to say or nothing 
that she would say against the match, there was 
another person who would, under ordinary circum- 
stances, have had a great deal to say. I have often 
wondered just how events would have turned out, if 
Dinah had not fallen ill. 

She did, suddenly and rather seriously. She had 
been ailing for a day or two, and on the evening of 
the kava-drinking at the Queen's, she had taken a 
bad turn. The doctor did not think her illness dan- 
gerous, but it puzzled him a little. She was very 
low, rather feverish, and inclined to be delirious, 
wandering every now and then and coming back to 
her senses only for a little time, before drifting off 
again into dreams and fancies. Lorraine ordered a 
nurse from the hospital to come down and attend to 
her; she, herself, was too practical and modern to 
think that unskilled nursing, however well meant, 
could be equal to the trained services of a compe- 
tent professional. 

The professional nursed Dinah for a day or two, 
and then asked to be allowed to remove her to the 
pretty cottage hospital on the hill overlooking the 
town. 

" She'd be far better there," explained Nurse El- 
sie, standing up straight and slim in her spotless blue 
uniform and white apron. " One doesn't know how 
these obscure troubles may turn out." 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 199 

"Do you mean that it's contagious?" asked 
Lorraine. 

" I don't mean anything, Miss Hamilton, because 
I don't know anything. But on general principles, 
when the patient keeps so persistently low and de- 
lirious, with quite a moderate temperature, it's as 
well to have her under closer observation than one 
can get in a private house." 

Maiera, who had called to inquire after Dinah, 
nodded her approval. 

" There are all sorts of queer things, that the doc- 
tors don't understand, in these islands," she said. 
" I'm sure she will be better where they can observe 
her all the time. Let us tell her; she will be so 
glad." 

" Here, stop ! " cried the nurse, as Maiera flitted, 
with that light dancing step of hers, out of the draw- 
ing-room and down the veranda that led to Dinah's 
room. 

Maiera did not seem to hear; she went fast; her 
pink satin nightdress robe floated out behind her, yet 
she did not seem to be hurrying. . . . 

The nurse followed her, on high tapping heels 
that pattered like little hoofs. I was sitting on a 
long chair just between the two rooms, the doors of 
both were open, and I could see in. 

Maiera reached Dinah's bed before Nurse Elsie 
was halfway down the veranda. She flung herself 
on her knees beside it. 

" Oh, Dinah, my very dear," she said in her coo- 
ing voice, " I am so glad; they are going to take 
you out of this hot house, up on the top of the hill to 
the lovely hospital, where you will have such good 
care. Presently they will come for you and take 
you away. Oh, I am so glad for you." 

That morning, the low delirium had almost 



200 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

cleared away; Dinah knew what was said to her, and 
understood most of it. The effect of Maiera's an- 
nouncement was dynamitic. Dinah, though ac- 
cepted by all the Hiliwa Dara family as practi- 
cally an equal, had nevertheless been born and bred 
in the domestic-servant class, and she retained all 
its prejudices. To the servant, the word " hos- 
pital " is one of unspeakable horror. While the 
titled employer, when sick, is ready at once to ex- 
change a luxurious home and perfect service for the 
austere private ward and its tyrannical nurse, her 
kitchen maid, in like case, shudders and weeps at 
the bare thought of hospital care; begs to be spared 
it; would gladly exchange, for half a bed in a grimy 
cottage and the rough help of ignorant neighbors, 
all the safeties, helps, and resources of modern 
science. . . . 

But Maiera could Maiera have known this? 
I cannot say. I can only say what happened. 
Dinah burst into tears, sat up in her bed, and de- 
clared her intention of running away. 

" Gi' me my bonnet and shawl," she said, hark- 
ing back, in her confused speech, to old days of 
youth and London for, in the burning islands, 
such words as u bonnet " and " shawl " are not in 
any one's vocabulary. " Gi' them me, till I get up 
and run where I can hide; I'll have no hussies with 
towels on their heads takin' me to where them doc- 
tors can poison me and cut me up after I'm dead." 

" Oh, hush, hush," soothed Maiera, making, on 
her knees, in her graceful, brilliant dress, a picture 
of surpassing loveliness (and well, I think, she knew 
it). "Dear Dinah, no one will do anything you 
don't like. Nobody will cut you up. The doctors 
only want to make you well. And the hospital is 
such a nice place " 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 201 

Dinah made a leap right out of bed, and began 
fumbling, with hands that shook pitifully, for her 
clothes. Nurse Elsie, who had been trying, ineffec- 
tually, to interrupt Maiera's speech, now took 
action. 

" Here, don't mind her," she said, in the clear, 
deliberate tone used so effectively by the practiced 
nurse. " You're not going anywhere. Get back 
into bed and have your beef tea. You're going to 
stay here, in this house. Come on, get back." 

"Am I going to stay? Am I? " begged Dinah, 
leaning on Nurse Elsie's arm, and climbing, pain- 
fully, into her deserted bed. " I'm not ill, you 
know, nurse; it's only a bit of infusion; insectual 
infusion, the doctor called it; I heard him. I always 
was easy infused. Let me lay quiet, and I'll be 
all right to-morrow; or if I'm not" her eyes 
brightened with a touch of the old interest in 
things funereal " you'll find my very best night- 
dress, never worn, in the second drawer from the 
top." 

" Pooh, nonsense ! " declared the nurse, throwing 
the sheet lightly over her patient, and tucking in 
the mosquito net. ' You'll want your boots to go 
out for a walk, more likely. . . . Now there," she 
said, moving away from the bed, "that's done it; 
you won't get her to hospital if you prayed her on 
your bended knees. Whatever did possess you to 
talk like that?" 

" Oh, I am sorry," grieved Maiera cooingly. 
We were all out on the veranda again. " I was so 
anxious to get her to go. I meant it all for the 
best." 

" Hum! " commented Nurse Elsie. " In my ex- 
perience, nine-tenths of the mischief that's done in 
the world goes under that label. I hope when I 



202 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

die, that they'll put on my tombstone ' She never 
meant anything for the best.' ' 

" I have brought some more of those good limes 
of Lalua's for her," said Maiera, meekly accepting 
the reproof. "There is nothing like them; but I 
am very sorry there are so few; I could only get 
three this morning." 

" Thanks, she fancies them, and they take down 
the fever a little," said the nurse. 

" Let me cool them, like before," asked Maiera. 
" It is such a pity there is no ice. . . . See, you must 
use a very, very sharp knife like mine " (she pulled 
a razor-edged sheath knife from her dress) " and 
you must cut the lime in two with a quick sweep, so 
that the oil shall not come out too much from the 
skin; it is too harsh, that oil, it burns the lip. Then, 
like this, you put it in the wind, but no sun, for ten 
minute, and it is cold." She set the plate of limes 
on the flat-topped rail of the veranda. They were 
certainly magnificent fruits; round, smooth-skinned, 
and as large as tennis balls. Maiera shifted the cut 
halves so that the wind should blow over them. 
" Give her to drink," she said, and floated away 
down the steps out through the garden. 

"She's wonderfully pretty, isn't she?" com- 
mented Nurse Elsie generously. 

* Yes," I agreed. " Do you like her? " 

"Do you?" countered the nurse. 

" I don't know," I said. And, indeed, I thought 
I did not know. 

Looking back upon that week, across the seas and 
across the years, it seems to me the most actual, 
vivid part of my life. I can hardly realize that at 
the time it all seemed to me like a dream. Yet this 
was so. I know that I w'ent through the business 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 203 

of every day, the sewing and preparing of my 
clothes, the turn of nursing in Dinah's room (for she 
kept still on the same level, neither better nor 
worse), the twelve o'clock rest for my complexion, 
the five o'clock walk for my health, as if I were 
only half awake. Every morning when I awoke in 
my little, still room overlooking the wide seas, I 
said to myself " I am going to marry Harry 
England in five days from to-day, counting to-day 
in four days in three. . . ." Every night when 
I tucked my mosquito net in all round and laid my 
head on the pillow I said to myself, " One more 
day gone; four days now three two. . . ." 
And I always added to myself, " I do not believe it." 

Yet, as I say, looking back and knowing now 
whither those five, four, three, two days were leading 
me, they seem clean cut upon the plain of memory as, 
on an Ukraine steppe, the tall black posts that mark 
what was once a track through snow. 

Harry England was away. He had called once, 
after his formal call on Lorraine, to tell me that 
important business took him from Hawonga, but 
that he would be back the day before that fixed for 
the wedding. 

He stayed a little while for a chat. I was more 
and more astonished by the difference between his 
behavior to me and that of Luke. Luke, in the little 
time that had been ours together, had seemed espe- 
cially anxious to mark his proprietorship of me. I 
was not to dance with this one. I was to do that, 
and was not to do the other. I was to remember 
so-and-so. I was to come out and wander alone 
with him in the garden, under the moonlight; I was 
to sit beside him on the bench, with his arm about 
me, when he chose, and to go in and dance again 
when he thought that dancing would be pleasant. 



204 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

He was like his letters so I thought kind, 
generous, but, oh, so determined on that point of 
proprietorship, on the holding of the foolish little 
bond that had been forged by our elders long ago ! 
Concerning that extraordinary flash of another spirit 
that had blazed up and burned the bond to a cinder, 
I did not think when engaged thus comparing my 
two lovers. I may have felt that it was so far alien 
to Luke's own real character as not to come into 
the question. 

Harry England, on the afternoon when he came to 
say good-by, was tactfully left with me by Lorraine. 
We were on the little side veranda, I remember; 
the small sheltered one, overhung with glorious 
chains of passion fruit and flowers, and overlooking 
at no great distance the cliff edge and the golden 
line of the sleeping, wide Pacific. He handed me a 
comfortable chair and took for himself the only 
straight one on the veranda, in which he sat upright, 
as he always did, one foot a little back, one hand 
leaning on his knee, the other dropped at his side. 
It is a graceful attitude, but I do not think he knew 
it to be so, except as he knew, in general, his own 
physical perfection. He sat thus, looking at me, 
oftener and longer than I could have wished, talking 
scarcely at all, and not moving during the first half 
hour of his stay from the position he had taken up. 
In homely phrase, his immobility " got on my 
nerves " at last; I had never seen any human being 
keep so still. His dark, long eyes, full of things 
uncomprehended, incomprehensible, seemed the only 
live things about him. They, indeed, were as alive 
as two electric dynamos in full play. ... I grew 
tired of making conversation; of telling him that I 
had been to call on the Garstangs, that Mabelle had 
a cold ; that everybody had been very nice about our 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 205 

engagement (which was true I don't think most 
people had had time to realize the original one 
before they heard it did not actually exist, and that 
the happy man was quite another than Luke). . . . 

I grew tired, as I say, and suddenly broke out 
with: 

" What are you thinking of? Why are you so 
still?" 

" Do you want me to be lively? " asked England, 
with the ghost of a smile about his lips, and those 
dynamos in his eyes beginning to sparkle more than 
ever. 

" I don't think I do," I said. 

;' Why do you not? " 

" Because," I answered him consideringly, " you 
seem to me like something that is still till it goes 
off with a bang." 

He laughed at this laughed heartily, with his 
hands suddenly put up before his face a boyish 
gesture that sat well on him, despite his thirty years. 

" You're not a bad judge of character, after all," 
he said. " But I'm not loaded or, if I am, the 
safety catch is down; you can throw me about any 
way that you like." 

Pacific folk know firearms. The simile was clear 
to me; I liked it. I felt a sudden confidence, a 
flashing realization of what it would mean through 
life to have this tamed fierceness, this reined-in 
strength, linked to my own emotion-swept slight 
soul. For that there was small stability in me I 
knew right well. Luke would have " taken care " 
of me. This man would stand like a tower between 
me and the very necessity of taking care. 

Most men, and many too many women, I 
knew, feared Harry England. It has come to me 
since then that I am perhaps the only human being 



206 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

who never did. But from that moment I would 
not have feared him had he stood with a knife at 
my throat. I had seen something in his soul that 
I say it after all that has passed, after all that the 
world has justly, hardly said was noble and to 
be trusted. 

" This won't do," said the captain, rising to his 
feet. " Four in the afternoon, and a fair wind 
rising. . . ." For, sailor-like, he had never lost 
sight of sky and sea while we sat together. " And 
the Queen not under way. It must be the fault of 
this other little Queen. What shall we do to her? " 
He stood before me, looking at me, his hands down 
at his sides. Luke (I could not escape the com- 
parison) would have had his hands, and his arms, 
elsewhere. " We'll punish her by saying good-by. 
Good-by, my girl the last of our good-bys! " 

He kissed me once, and went. I stood where he 
left me. I did not know when he had gone. I had 
been swept up into Paradise, and the light had 
seared my eyes. 

" Come down," said Lorraine's voice beside me. 
" I want you to help me with Dinah's tea; the nurse 
is gone for her walk." 

I started. 

" I didn't know you were there," I stammered. 

" I wasn't, but I am now," replied Lorraine. She 
looked at me, not with sympathy. I could not help 
feeling, in those days, that although she was doing 
all in her power to help me, it was not through 
love. 

u I wonder," I said, following her out to the store- 
room, " if we aren't dreadfully heartless having this 
wedding with Dinah so ill." 

" The doctor says it isn't dangerous," replied 
Lorraine, opening presses and china cupboards, and 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 207 

searching for the cup she wanted a large one, 
that Dinah liked. " He is only afraid " 

"What?" 

" That's the cup now; I can't think why the nurse 
will always . . . Oh, he says that perhaps the mind 
is affected, and she may not get it back. He is a 
good deal puzzled; the illness is so slight and the 
delirium so persistent." 

" Dinah not get her mind Oh, nonsense, 
you must have misunderstood him ! " I cried in 
dismay. 

" I don't misunderstand people as a rule. Will 
you light the Primus, please? . . . Well, if she 
doesn't, what are you going to do about it? Put 
off the wedding? " 

" Oh, no, Lorraine ! " I cried. " That would be 
so unlucky." 

" It might," she said. " Have you ever thought 
of how Luke will take it? " 

" He hasn't any right to an opinion," I answered, 
head in air. " He threw that away when he wrote 
to me as he did." 

"You're quite satisfied about that?" asked Lor- 
raine. She was busy again in the china cupboard; 
she spoke over her shoulder. 

" Of course I am; why not? " 

" Yes, why not? " she repeated, after the slightest 
interval. Then, turning round, " If you will see to 
the kettle I'll go and look if the nurse isn't in yet; 
she ought to be with Dinah." 

I filled the kettle, and put it cautiously on the 
roaring Primus, of which I was always more or less 
afraid. I stood watching it idly for a minute or 
two. A hurried step sounded from Dinah's room. 

" She's gone," said Lorraine's voice, with more 
perturbation in it than was usual to her. 



208 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

I turned round. My aunt was hastily pinning on 
a hat and snatching up a sunshade. 

" Stay here in case she returns," she commanded. 

'Who? What is it?" I cried. 

" Dinah's got up and gone out. Her clothes have 
disappeared. Now, don't get into one of your 
fusses, Dara. She can't have gone far, and no one 
in the town would allow her to fall into any danger. 
I expect to bring her back before Nurse Elsie 
returns. She should have been in from her walk; 
if she had been it couldn't have happened." 

Lorraine went out, in no tearing hurry, but 
quietly, quickly. I knew she would find Dinah if 
Dinah was to be found; I knew, too, that what she 
said about the absence of danger was true. But, 
nevertheless, my heart misgave me strangely, and it 
was not altogether eased when a rickshaw, drawn by 
a native, rattled up to the front veranda, carrying 
two passengers. Nurse Elsie, who had just 
returned, flew down the steps full of apologies. 

"Take her other arm; she is tired out," said 
Lorraine. " She hadn't gone far; only to the post 
office. I found her on the steps, sitting down in a 
faint. She's all right now; aren't you, Dinah? " 

" Yes, Miss Lorraine," answered our old serv- 
ant collectedly. " I've been sick, I know, but I 
feel that much better to-night I couldn't tell you." 

"Whatever made you get up and go out?" 
demanded Nurse Elsie. 

Dinah looked at her, but made no open reply. 
Something she did say, in a too-audible aside, about 
hussies who wore towels on their heads and tried to 
" ordain their betters," but it was scarcely to the 
point. They got her to bed, gave her a stimulant 
and a cooling drink, and kept the room as quiet as 
possible ; but before nightfall the delirium had come 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 209 

on worse than ever, and we had to take watch and 
watch at her side, to prevent her getting out again. 

Her ravings were mostly of her old home days, 
reminiscences of a Dickensian London forgotten 
long ago ; but once or twice they made excursion into 
present time. She told me that I was dancing too 
much and would get tired. She said once, after a 
long silence, " I done it! " triumphantly; and then, 
the doctor's quieting medicine beginning to take 
effect, she let her head drop on the pillow and closed 
her eyes. 

" That'll do," said the physician, who had been 
hurriedly sent for. " I'll go now; she'll be quiet 
but no more of these excursions." 

" I done it," insisted Dinah, opening her eyes 
again. 

' Yes, yes, of course you did," soothed Nurse 
Elsie. She herded Lorraine and myself out of the 
room, and lowered the light. 

The wedding was fixed for a Saturday. It was 
to be in the church, but entirely private. Seven in 
the morning was the hour chosen; Harry England 
had told me that that would suit his plans for the 
schooner best. We were going away on her; he 
had not told me where. " It's to be a surprise for 
you," was all he would say. Of course I guessed 
what the surprise was going to be. It had been the 
desire of my life to visit Tahiti to see a French 
colony, with a gay little Frenchified town, to drive 
round the island behind one of the Tahiti teams, 
see the tomb of King Pomare, visit Pierre Loti's 
pool, and last, but certainly not least to shop 
in stores that were kept by real French people, and 
would, in consequence, have the most charming 
things in them. . . . 



210 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

Harry knew this. It followed, of course, that 
the bow of the Queen would be pointed for Tahiti 
when we sailed. But I humored him by pretending 
not to guess what he had in store. I packed all my 
smartest clothes in two great boxes ; I included every 
pair of shoes I had, and they were many. French- 
women were so particular about their shoes. . . . 
Well, most of them, I was comfortably certain, did 
not wear a " narrow two." 

And so the days before the wedding went by. 

During that week the weather broke. The year 
was well advanced, and the heat, in consequence, 
almost at its worst; but we had not yet had the great 
gales that can only blow from the northwest in the 
latter months, rising in some ill-omened years to 
hurricane force. They were, however, overdue, 
and Wednesday and Thursday saw their commence- 
ment. By Friday, the day before that set for the 
wedding, the seas were running mountains high 
outside the reef, and the lagoon within was a mass 
of beaten foam. The palm trees, striving with the 
wind, leaned eastward in long curves; their stream- 
ing tressy leaves, their piteous slim white bodies 
giving them, as ever, the look of women attacked 
and distressed, that is so characteristic of palm 
trees in a gale. 

How many wives and sweethearts oh, how 
many! in that ocean world of the islands, where 
the wild sea is the only road, have watched, as I 
watched, the streaming tresses of the palms in a 
blackened sky; have tried to believe that, as hour 
after hour wore on, the torment of the beaten leaves 
grew less, the long, flower-like stems give way to 
the wind no more ! How many, with a sickening 
heart, have seen instead the palm heads bend and 
bend, the trunks twist more desperately with every 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 211 

rising assault; have heard with agony the sharp 
crack that tells the victory of the storm, and seen 
some mighty head go down the gale, carrying in its 
wild flight the last of hope ! 

It is the palms that tell eighty feet up in air, 
with leaves like giant feathers, they are the first to 
feel and show increase in the wind; the first to 
announce by their quick relief any slackening of its 
force. When the heads of the palms, with all their 
panoply of leaves and store of weighty nuts, begin 
to go, then men say that it is no longer a gale, but 
the dreaded hurricane; then women, watching the 
sea as only island women watch, lose heart and hope 
no more for the return of the feeble, battling sail 
that carries all they love. . . . 

That Friday I was nearly mad. I knew that the 
Pacific had never yet brewed the weather that 
would hold back Harry England from taking out 
his ship. I knew that to-day, of all days, he would 
assuredly be battling with the gale, which was more 
than a gale I dared not give it its true name 
among the horrible reefs that surrounded the 
Hawonga group. I knew, with the painful knowl- 
edge of the island girl, that the wind was in the 
wrong quarter for his approach, and that he must 
beat up, inch by inch, almost dead against the 
storm he had sailed out somewhere to the east- 
ward with a strong fair wind, I had to know this, 
and to watch, and look, and wait. . . . 

Lorraine was kind enough. She thought my fear 
plain folly, but she did not say so outright. She 
went about her business in the house, calmly house- 
keeping, calmly packing, with the help of a native 
girl, the last of the trunks that I was to take away 
in the morning. She gave orders as usual for the 
turning out of the spare bedroom, which was always 



212 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

scrubbed on a Friday, even though the girl declared 
with tears that there was no use scrubbing out a 
room when the house would probably be unroofed 
before nighttime. The fearful noise of the storm 
did not seem to affect her in the least. We had 
deserted the verandas as untenable on such a day, 
and were living in the inner rooms; a thing that, in 
the tropic world, one only does during gales. From 
time to time as she passed up and down my aunt 
would pause, look out at the sea, and then return to 
her work without comment. 

"Is it better?" I would cry to her from my 
place on the bed, where I was hiding my head 
among pillows, and trying not to see the awful waves. 

" You can hear for yourself. Why do you 
behave so foolishly? Don't you think Harry 
England knows how to manage a ship? " 

" Yes, but any captain should run for shelter with 
such a wind and he won't." 

" What are you going to do after the wedding, 
supposing the gale keeps on, if you are so 
scared? " 

" Do? " I said, sitting up on my bed, and shaking 
back the cloak of my fallen hair; " sail with him." 

" If it keeps on like this?" 

" If it was twenty times worse if it was the 
Day of Judgment breaking up the world I'd 
sail with him." 

" You are a curious mixture," said my aunt, look- 
ing at me with eyes not disapproving. 

'What would you do yourself, Lorraine?" 

" I ? " Lorraine stood up, very straight and slim, 
with her long hands clasped before her on the black 
and green dress that had so little now of mourning 
in it. " I'd go to the man I loved through burning 
fire. I'd walk along a road of naked swords. And 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 213 

I wouldn't, before or after, howl. If the man 
deserved love he would deserve courage, too. 
Courage for him as well as for myself. There's 
where your love fails, my little Dara. It's easy for 
a woman to be brave for herself harder when 
she has to be brave for him. A woman should 
venture everything for the man she loves so long 
as honor's kept what matters what the world says? " 

" I don't understand you," I said, lying down 
again and putting my hands over my aching head. 
The wind grew up fiercer than ever; the iron roof of 
the bungalow resounded like a drum. 

" It will to go, it will to go! " sobbed the native 
girl at the door. 

"It won't go!" said Lorraine. "I have been 
looking at the barometer, and that's on the turn. 
Go on with your work. Dara, if you don't want 
to look like a perfect fright to-morrow, you had 
better take hold of yourself a bit. England won't 
be drowned this time. I daresay he will some day 
there's truth in the saying about the pitcher and the 
well but the day's not yet." 

I hardly heard the last of her sentence, I was so 
eager to verify what she had said about the glass. 
I sprang from my bed and flew to the place in the 
hall where the great aneroid barometer was hung. 

The movable brass had announced a rise. 

" Thank God ! " I said, clinging to the barometer 
as an Italian to his saint. 

" And now, I suppose," said Lorraine, " we shall 
have some peace." 

The gale hurricane whatever it may have 
been called it was half of one and half of the 
other, I think went down much more quickly than 
it had risen. By sunset the palm-tree tops were 
almost still, shaking only a little from side to side 



2i4 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

now and then, as if they could not quite forget what 
they had suffered, and were still agitated over the 
memory of it. The night came, clear and full of 
stars. At the foot of the cliffs the sea, unappeased, 
thundered in the darkness. 

" He will come to-night," I said. 

When dinner was cleared away I sat on the 
veranda and watched. It was too dark to see a 
sail, if there was one, beat up across the open bay, 
but I knew that I should have some sign, even as I 
knew that the Queen of the Islands would not fail 
to come. 

Dinah was settled down by her nurse for the 
night; I went in to see her, and to kiss her, before 
she fell asleep. She seemed unusually well that 
evening; I longed to tell her what was to happen on 
the morrow, but Nurse Elsie was on the watch and 
never left us alone. 

" Now that she's on the mend," she warned me as 
I went out, " don't you go setting her back. She 
may seem better, but she's in no state to hear any 
agitating news." 

"Haven't you any idea what the illness is?" I 
asked. 

" Oh, I leave that to the doctor," was her strictly 
professional reply. " But I can say this much, 
you'll have her about again in no time. She has 
taken a good deal of nourishment to-day, and that's 
new. She'd a fancy for fruit invalids always do 
crave for acids but I couldn't get her any on 
account of the storm. I wouldn't give her passion 
fruit off the veranda, it's so sweet and seedy, and 
there was nothing else." 

" Have you none of Lalua's limes? " I asked. 

Nurse Elsie brisked up into indignation. 

" I should think not," she said, " when that useless 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 215 

house girl of yours has taken the lot for herself. 
I told Miss Hamilton, and she'd have given her 
what-for with the chill off, only the girl had gone 
home as soon as the wind went down." 

" Never mind, we'll have some to-morrow as soon 
as Dinah's awake," I said. u She has simply got to 
be better, on my wedding day." 

The nurse twisted her chatelaine round and round. 

" They say," she ventured, " that Captain 
England is is Well, I suppose you're not 
marrying him without knowing that he's Lucifer 
himself." 

" Good night," I pronounced, with dignity. I 
went off to my room, so much angered by the last 
few words of the nurse that those which had gone 
before made no impression at all. 

You will ask how could we have been so 
stupid, so unseeing? And I can only reply that it is 
easy to be wise after the event. You must remem- 
ber that you have by this time guessed things not 
known to us until later until too late. . . . 

The evening was advanced now, and the house 
had quieted down. But I did not undress. I sat 
on the veranda outside my room with my head 
leaning on the rail, and looked out at the stars and 
down to the unappeased, dark sea, and waited. 

Ten o'clock came eleven and then the 
faintest blur of white on the face of the black plain, 
moving flying to the harbor and the town, and 
to me. There came a call across the waters; a call 
thin with distance as a bat's voice in the forest. No 
man but one could have sent such a signal across 
such a space of sea. . . . 

I waited. Half-past eleven struck. The town 
was dark; the house had settled down to silence long 
ago. Only a night bird, among the tiere flowers in 



216 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

the garden, sang a little curious song, repeated over 
and over. 

Then I heard, a long way down the road, the 
light pit, pit of running feet. It was not twenty 
seconds before they sounded near beside me. 
And in the faint light of ray candle lantern set on 
the veranda floor, I saw standing below with 
tumbled hair and sea-stained garments, Harry 
England. 

The vision of him struck me like a blow I 
thought at first he was a ghost his own wandering 
spirit come to tell me of his death, so white and 
strange he looked, so wet were his clothes. I knew 
afterwards that he had been on the deck of the 
Queen fighting the storm for two whole days and 
nights without rest, when he ran up the road to my 
house in the dark of that night before our wedding 
morning. 

I don't know what I expected him to say, but as 
usual it was something that no one could have 
anticipated. 

The veranda was low and he was tall. He 
reached up till he could put his cold, wet hand on 
mine, as it lay on the railing. 

"Girl!" he said, "are you sure as death you 
want to go on with it? " 

If Luke or any other man had asked me 
such a question I should have been offended hurt, 
frightened I do not know what. I should have 
fancied that he wanted to draw back. Anyhow, I 
should have misunderstood in some way. 

But it was Harry England, and I understood. 

" I am sure as death," I answered him in his own 
words. 

" I've run you in for it," he said, still in that 
strange, excited voice, his eyes shining black in his 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 217 

white face. " I've played on you. You hadn't a 
chance. . . ." 

" I don't wish for one," I said. " I want you." 

" You know what I am," he went on, speaking 
quickly. 

I understand now that the intense fatigues and 
anxieties of the past few days had shaken even his 
iron nerve and beaten down, in consequence, the 
guard he commonly kept over his speech. 

" I can't promise to alter much. I'm some- 
thing of a wrong 'un. I must have what I want 
must go where I please and things stand between, 
and I break them. I'll always do it. I'd give my 
life to make you happy, but I shan't. You had best 
know it, girl." 

Words have never come easily to me in the great 
crises of life ; I could find but one thing to say : 

" I don't want to be happy. I want you." 

He stood there, struggling for a moment with 
the impulse to say something or not to say it I 
could not tell which, but I could tell it was a matter 
of import. Then he turned away, still looking up 
at me. 

" You'll have what you want," he said. " And, 
by God, so will I." 

It was an oath, strongly spoken too strongly 
for the occasion, for what was there in truth to 
hold him from his wish and mine? 

He never said good night. I heard him running 
down the road again pit-pit, pit-pit and then 
he was gone, and the small bird in the tiere flowers 
took up its tiny song, curious, sad, over and over 
again. 



CHAPTER XI 

THERE was never a quieter wedding morning. 
The clouds to one who knew their signs 
promised wind before midday, but at seven o'clock, 
when Lorraine and I walked down together to the 
little white church among the poinsettias and the 
palms, there was not a breath astir. The air was 
still pleasantly cool, though the sun, from the sea's 
broad blazing shield, began to strike fiercely up- 
wards in our faces. Out beyond the reef waves 
were grumbling; within it the lagoon lay still and 
vividly, marvelously green. 

Under my lace and linen parasol I walked slowly, 
not to become overheated before we should reach 
the church. As the wedding was to be so quiet, I 
wore neither wreath nor veil. Lorraine, with her 
unerring taste, had selected for me a delicate white 
dress, silk-embroidered by the hands of patient 
Chinese, and a hat of the sailor shape that was then 
in fashion, trimmed with bunches of white violets. 
She herself, for the first time in my recollection of 
her, had put off all traces of the mourning she had 
worn so long, and now went clad in pale lemon 
color and lace. It suited her amazingly. 

For all my vanity of a pretty girl I realized as we 
walked under the poinsettias together that the 
woman beside me was my equal, if not more than my 
equal, in looks. 

Of course, I thought, in my secret soul, that it was 
rather foolish of Lorraine to insist on being pretty 
at the frightful age of five and thirty. But since 

218 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 219 

she would do it, it was as well, I thought being 
my aunt and guardian that she should do the 
thing properly. Lorraine was certainly a relation 
for any bride to be proud of. 

I had thought I should be nervous. I was not; 
there never went to the church a calmer bride than I. 
I was marrying the only man in the world; I was 
doing the only thing I could have done. It was as 
natural as the sunrise or the stars. . . . 

"Lorraine?" I asked her, as we neared the 
church, " how did you feel on your wedding morn- 
ing? Do you know, you never told me all about it. 
How old were you, Lorraine? " 

" I was just your age," she said, but the other half 
of the question she left unanswered. We were 
almost at the porch, and I did not speak to her 
again, for it seemed to me that she did not care on 
that day to look back. 

" If some one," I thought, with a cold shiver, 
" were to come and tell me, as they told her, that 
he was dead ... I should never go on living as 
Lorraine did. I think I should just fall down where 
they told me, and my heart would break, and I 
should die." 

Somehow I had said the last three words aloud. 
Lorraine stopped in the dust of the roadway, so 
that I, perforce, had to stop, too. 

" You would," she said emphatically, " or break 
your heart, or go mad. You are not the kind to 
stand up against the loss of the biggest thing in the 
world. Any one who saves you from that is your 
friend." 

" Lorraine," I said helplessly, " I can't under- 
stand you; but if we don't go on they will be 
waiting." 

She laughed, a curious little laugh. " No, you 



220 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

don't understand, but don't forget it all the same," 
she said. And we went into the church. 

There was a clergyman I know, and I know, too, 
that early as it was a few curious folk from the 
surrounding villas had come in to look on at the 
wedding, and were scattered about the pews. But 
I did not see them. I do not remember even seeing 
the Rector, with his surplice and his book. I saw 
one figure only, that of Harry England. 

He was standing in the chancel, close to the rails, 
looking down the church. He was very tall in his 
white, gold-buttoned suit ; the light from two colored 
windows fell in crossing streams upon him, and 
patched his coat with rays of blue and " patines of 
bright gold." His eyes met me as I entered, and 
held fast to mine. And I went up the aisle, beside 
Lorraine, unconscious that I was walking, uncon- 
scious that Dara Hamilton was Dara Hamilton, 
only knowing that those eyes were holding my eyes 
and drawing me to him. How shall I tell the rest ? 

Lorraine had fallen into the background. I had 
taken my place by Harry England; the Rector had 
opened his book, and I was coming back to myself, 
and remembering that I must now hear and speak 
for the second time, in earnest and with all my 
heart, the words that I had spoken carelessly and 
without understanding as a child. I hated the 
thought of that previous speaking and hearing as I 
had hated the thought of Luke's past kisses on the 
lips that were Harry England's now. 

" Dearly beloved . . ." 

Did the Rector actually speak, or did I anticipate 
the words that I knew? I cannot say. I have 
never been quite clear concerning what happened in 
that moment, except as to one thing. 

There was a disturbance in the church behind me. 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 221 

Some one had come in in a hurry; some one was 
walking very fast running, almost up the aisle. 
The Rector stopped if he had begun; I am not 
sure of that and looked over his book. I heard 
the rustle of Lorraine's crisp dress, as if she had 
suddenly turned. I don't know what the thought 
in my mind was something vague about the 
schooner, I think, and a possible accident to her, 
and people wanting her captain. ... I looked up at 
Harry's face. It was perfectly immobile; he had 
not glanced round. 

Then the thunderbolt fell. 

" Stop this marriage ! " 

It was Luke's voice. I turned, so bewildered that 
I had not even strength to be angry, or to fear 
yet and I saw Luke Ivory, white, breathless, 
standing at the foot of the chancel steps. 

The Rector, holding his book still open, faced 
him and asked: 

"What do you mean? This is a very serious 
thing to do. What right have you to interfere?" 
He knew, as many in Hawonga did, that Luke and 
I had been not long before an engaged couple. I 
suppose he thought that the interruption was a 
jealous lover's revenge. 

Luke, still somewhat out of breath, replied, with 
short pauses between his words: 

" I've every right. This lady is married to 
me." 

The Rector shut his book; he seemed to think 
that matters were getting serious. 

" Come into the vestry," he said sharply. People 
in the church were beginning to stand up and talk. 

We went into the vestry the Rector, Lorraine, 
myself, Harry England, and Luke. I was holding 
tight to Harry England's hand. It terrified me to 



222 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

feel that his own clasp was slack. His face terrified 
me, too. It had the dead, inhuman look I had seen 
on it once before on that night when only the 
cunning of Lalua had saved Luke Ivory's life. 

" Now," said the Rector, " will you please explain 
what you have said? You claim to be married to 
Miss Dara Hamilton. What are your proofs? 
What has she to say herself? " 

" Dara can't deny," said Luke, " that she and I 
were married at Hiliwa Dara Island by my great- 
grandfather, who was an ordained minister, licensed 
to perform marriages in the diocese the island is 
in." 

" Is this true ? " asked the Rector. His pinkish, 
whiskered face seemed half angry, half perplexed. 
He did not seem to know what to believe. 

" We we there was a ceremony," I stam- 
mered. 

" A marriage ceremony? " 

"Yes but " 

" Then, may I ask, what do you and Captain 
England mean by " 

" Leave it to me," said England, speaking for the 
first time. He had grown white beneath his dark 
sea tan; it had a curious look. But he was much 
the most self-possessed of any person there. 

" The ceremony," he said, " was performed be- 
tween two children of twelve and fifteen, nearly six 
years ago. They were separated immediately after, 
and did not meet again until they saw one another, 
for a few minutes, at Colonel Garstang's dance. 
Ivory left for Hiliwa Dara Island that night. 
Those are the facts." 

" Hiliwa Dara six years ago " repeated the 
Rector. " At that time the whole group was under 
British law. The ceremony undoubtedly holds 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 223 

good, if performed with parents' consent. Unusual, 
of course very, but " 

" Oh! " I cried, " Mrs. Wilcox said no one could 
be married at that age and Mrs. " 

" It doesn't matter how many ill-informed people 
said it. The business of a clergyman is to know 
such things; he doesn't guess. Why, may I ask, did 
no one apply to me if there was any doubt on the 
matter?" 

' There never wias any," put in Luke, somewhat 
hotly. " I have the certificate that my great- 
grandfather wrote out; he told me to keep it. And 
he said he had had it registered properly, and any- 
thing he said he had done, was done." 

" We could apply to Wellington for a copy," said 
the clergyman. " Indeed, I have already asked to 
have the registers of the British occupation returned 
and placed under my care. Their removal was a 
most ill-judged proceeding, which could not have 
occurred anywhere except in the Pacific Islands." 
He spoke as if he were preaching. 

For a moment there was a pause a sickening 
pause. No one seemed to know what was to 
happen next. The sun, now well up, threw bars of 
streaming gold through the narrow lancet windows 
of the vestry upon the open pages of the marriage 
register, laid ready on the table. Pen and ink were 
beside it. 

In the silence Harry England stepped forward, 
reached a chair, and placed it just in time behind my 
knees. I had not known that they were failing 
under me. 

Then everybody, almost, began to talk at once. 
It was horrible. 

" Lorraine, I trusted you ; in Heaven's name 
what have you been about? " 



224 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

" I cannot imagine," from the Rector, " why a 
holy ceremony should have been made into such 
a" 

' Why, Luke, have you forgotten your letter to 
her? If that didn't release me of my trust, as you 
call it, what " 

" Letter? What was there in it? " 

" Your letter," I cried, speaking at last. " Your 
letter in which you said I hadn't turned out as you 
expected, and didn't care for you, and you gave me 
up, and thought the engagement had better not 
be " 

" Engagement? If any letter of mine ever used 
such a word I'll eat it. There was no engagement 
between us. Didn't you hear me call you my wife ? " 

" I thought it only meant Oh, Luke, you wrote 
and said there was nothing. You said you gave me 
up and left me free." 

Luke had turned very pale. 

" Before God," he said, " I never wrote any such 
letter." 

There was a dead silence. 

1 Who did write it? " asked Luke. 

" I saw it," said Lorraine. " It's in the house. 
It's in your handwriting, and " 

" Then some one," said Luke, " has committed 
forgery." 

I screamed out loud. 

" Oh, dear me, dear me," protested the Rector, 
" that's a very serious charge." 

" Some one," repeated Luke, " has committed 
forgery. Some one's tried to commit bigamy, as 
well. And it's impossible that Lorraine, you 
can't look me in the face and say you, at least, didn't 
know the marriage was legal. Lorraine Lor- 
raine!" 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 225 

There was an extraordinary note of reproach in 
his tone reproach and something more. . . . 

Lorraine threw up her hands and covered her 
face. 

" I can deal with you," said Luke, facing Harry 
England, who all this time had neither moved nor 
spoken. " You're a forger and a bigamist, and a 
coward, and I'd rather die than let Dara touch your 
little finger again. Is that enough? " 

" Yes," said England, and the blank black eyes 
broke into flame. 

It was Lorraine who cried out now Lorraine 
and the Rector. ... I remember a whirling con- 
fusion in the great stone-vaulted vestry; a chorus of 
"Luke! Luke!" "England! for God's sake 
remember where you are O Lord, they'll kill 
Gentlemen oh, disgraceful " and another cry 
of " Luke ! " from Lorraine. Then a trampling of 
feet from the front of the church, as the people who 
had been waiting, avid with curiosity, in the nave, 
broke all bounds and rushed to the vestry door. 
And then ... no one looking a current of fresh 
air on my face the outer door the steps the 
white road under my shoe soles, flying, flying . . . 

I did not think; I did not cry. I was conscious of 
one feeling only; one desire. The cliff! The end! 

And as my mother had gone when love went out 
and left the world all dark, so, through the darkness 
of that daytime, went I; so, running, pushing, 
stumbling past the house and past the garden, and 
with one leap, over the cliff. 



There seemed to be no interval at all between the 
feeling of a rush of air streaming up in my face, 
faster and faster, and a slow painful waking up in 



226 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

the dark, with something hard beneath me, and the 
sound of water lapping and splashing very near. 

I had no intervening period of half consciousness. 
I found myself almost at once and knew where I 
was. I was lying on the cane platform of a large 
native canoe, and the canoe was under sail and 
drawing rapidly through the water before a strong 
favoring breeze. And it was night, and the stars 
were in the sky. 

I say I knew where I was, but I did not for the 
moment remember what had happened. I lay on 
my hard bed, and puzzled myself to find out how I 
had come there. Two natives were in the narrow 
body of the canoe, seated upright on the little 
bamboo bars that crossed from side to side. They 
were both men, and they were talking in one of the 
island dialects. I did not understand what they 
said. 

"What is it? Where am I?" I asked in 
English, lifting myself on my elbow and becoming 
conscious that I was strangely stiff and sore, as if I 
had had a fall. 

One of the men turned his head and spoke to me, 
but he did not use my language. His tone was that 
of a man who makes an explanation. The other 
man began to talk in his turn. I gathered, some- 
how, that they were afraid of me. They had 
placed me as far away from themselves as the limits 
of the canoe permitted, and when I moved as if to 
come nearer they gave a simultaneous shout and 
started back. Then they seized their paddles and 
began to work hard, helping on the canoe in the 
direction whither the breeze was already carrying 
her. She went through the water like a launch, 
and not the slowest of launches, either. With a fair 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 227 

wind and not too high a sea the island canoes can 
make surprisingly quick going. 

I sat up, cross-legged, as one must sit on a canoe 
platform, and looked about me. My hair was all 
down and streaming in my face. I could not find 
any hairpins, so I plaited it, and threw it back in 
one large rope over my shoulder. There was 
something wrong with my forehead; it seemed to 
have had a blow, and was sore to touch, and swelled, 
and one of my fingers the left little one was 
sprained so that I could not use it. These things 
puzzled me a little, but only a little. There was a 
certain confusion in my head that seemed to prevent 
my thinking clearly. I was clear about one thing 
only the fact that I was hungry. 

" Have you any kai-kai? " I asked. 

" Kai-kai " (food) is a word comprehended by 
almost every island native, whatever his tongue. 
One of the men nodded and reached down into the 
bottom of the canoe. He brought up a handful of 
bananas and a lump of cold yam. I took them 
eagerly and ate. The men watched me with interest 
and seemed to argue about something. . . . 

" Niu? " I asked them, using the word for cocoa- 
nut that is common to most island languages. They 
gave me one and I drank. Again they watched me 
and disputed. I caught the word for " spirits," and 
guessed that for some reason or other they took me 
to be a supernatural being, and were arguing about 
the capacity of spirits for eating. 

By and by one of the men seized the other by the 
arm and pointed ahead, swinging the mat sail a little 
to one side, so as to change the course of the canoe. 
I looked into the darkness and saw at the distance 
of a mile or two a black shape blotting the stars. 



228 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

The canoe went fast through the water. By and 
by I could hear the humming of a distant reef and 
see its long white outline cut across the dark table 
of sea. The natives lowered their sail altogether 
and, turning the prow of the canoe, began to paddle 
towards the reef. 

" Where are you going? What's the matter? " 
I asked them. I was still feeling confused and 
shaken, but it began to grow upon me that some- 
thing, somewhere, had happened. And now I 
became conscious that I w'as uncomfortably, stiffly 
wet, as if I had been soaked and then dried in the 
sun with all my clothes on. 

The natives only grunted for reply. 

I gave it up. I knew too well that if a Kanaka 
will not speak you cannot make him. Still dazed 
and puzzled I sat on the canoe platform and watched 
the outline of the reef grow wider, the impending 
bulk of land rise darker and higher. They paddled 
the canoe towards an opening in the reef, where 
black, smooth water broke the pounding foam. 
They took her through. They glided cautiously, as 
one who hardly knows his way, across the lagoon 
within, until the leaning palm trees on the shore had 
come very near. Then in the intense black shadow 
of the palms they grounded the canoe, leaped out, 
and pulled her up the beach. 

" Get out," they said to me. I did not know their 
dialect, but the sense was unmistakable. 

Perhaps I might under ordinary circumstances 
have disputed the question. To be abandoned in 
the middle of the night, in the dark, on an unknown 
island is not a fate that most women would accept 
without protest. But I was still suffering in some 
degree from the effects of the blow that had marked 
my forehead, and I obeyed as if hypnotized. They 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 229 

did not touch me or try to hurry me out of the canoe ; 
on the contrary, they withdrew to its far end as I 
climbed out over the bow. 

Scarcely was I fairly landed on the beach when 
they had the canoe by its sides, hauling it off again 
with feverish haste. They jumped in almost before 
it was afloat, and paddled away as if the devil him- 
self were after them. 

" Hoo-hau-hoo ! " I heard them shouting exult- 
antly. ..." Hoo-hau-hoo ! " Their voices died 
away in the tumbling smother of the reef; the open 
seas beyond swallowed them up, and it was as if they 
had never been. 

And I was alone. 

I might have been more frightened had I been 
more myself. As it was with that dull, hypno- 
tized feeling clinging about me, and veiling half my 
faculties - I w'as not greatly dismayed. Indeed I 
was conscious of some relief at the departure of the 
two natives. They did not like me or something 
about me of that I was certain. Well, they were 
gone, and the rocking and splashing of the canoe 
had ceased, and under the palm leaves that cut great 
swathes of black among the tinseled stars it was 
very still. That and the softness of the sand in 
which I stood exerted a suggestive influence in my 
trance-like condition. I yielded to it and lay down. 
In a moment or two I slept. 

It must have been real sleep, unrelated to the 
stupor in which I know now I had passed the 
whole day and part of the night. I don't know how 
much farther in that interminable night it could have 
been when I. woke up. But I felt restored, rested, 
and oh, God ! clear in mind once more. 

It all came upon me with blasting force. I knew 
who I was and what had happened. I remembered 



230 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

the scene in the church the yet more terrible 
scene in the vestry. I realized that I did not know 
what had been the outcome of that last horror. 
Had one of the men who held my destiny between 
them killed the other? Was that one now arrested, 
in jail, in danger of I could not form the 
word . . . 

I remembered oh, I remembered ! " Forger 
. . . bigamist. . . ." And the silence that met the 
charge. 

" Oh ! " I cried, as the truth fell upon me like a 
shower of stones. I ran in the dusk up and down 
the silent beach, shaking my hands about as people 
do in the pictures and in plays. If I had been able 
to think I would have known then that the gestures 
commonly named " theatrical," " affected," are in 
truth neither the one nor the other. They have 
not their birth in the theater, but in the heart of 
mankind. 

"What shall I do?" I cried, as every one does 
cry in extremity of sorrow. "What shall I do? 
How can I go on living " 

And there I stopped, for I had remembered 
something else the wild rush along the lane ways 
and the gardens, over the cliff to death. I had 
gone as my mother had gone but I had not met 
her fate. 

What had happened? Memory was of no use 
here. I could only guess. 

The bruise on my forehead and the swollen 
finger helped me. I was a clever diver, and not 
afraid of a good height twenty feet or so. But 
I had never supposed that any one, save the few 
famous divers known to all the world, could fall 
through a hundred feet of air and live. 

It seemed plain, when I thought matters over, 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 231 

that in falling I had, partly by chance and partly by 
instinct, flung myself into the only position that 
could have saved me. The condition of my hand 
was a proof. It must have struck the water first, 
and my head must have been almost though not 
quite protected by the arch of the arms and 
hands; else the stunning bruise on my forehead 
would have been a fracture of the skull. 

What had happened next? A canoe had picked 
me up. I must have been floating about in the 
water, possibly some good way from land. The 
natives in the canoe had probably seen my fall from 
the full height of the cliff and picked me up, sup- 
posing me to be dead. Then I had recovered, and 
they had instantly made up their minds that I was a 
sorceress of some kind, since from their point of 
view no woman especially no white woman 
could live through such a fall. The Hawongas 
and the neighboring groups, though nominally 
Christian, are seething under the surface with 
sorcery and magical beliefs. It must have seemed 
to the natives a foregone conclusion that I had 
supernatural powers, and was consequently a being 
to be feared and to be got rid of as soon as possible. 

Yes, that part was clear. It was not clear, how- 
ever, where I was and what was to become of me. 
I had no idea how far the canoe might or might not 
have carried me. The remains of Friday's storm 
still hung about Port Hervey in the shape of a stiff, 
steady breeze and a rolling sea. Before that breeze 
the canoe, running all day and half the night, might 
have taken me over a hundred miles away. \ I tried 
to remember the look of the map eastward and 
southeastward of Hawonga, but I could not recall 
anything about it save an impression of large blank 
spaces of sea, with here and there an insignificant 



232 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

dot or two. ... If the canoe had been a very fast 
one and the wind very strong and steady all day it 
was just possible that I might at that moment be 
ashore on the outermost of a small inhabited group 
about a hundred and sixty miles from Port Hervey. 
It had a couple of plantations on it and a cattle run; 
white people lived there even a white woman or 
so. ... Yes, that was possible. 

I did not long continue to speculate. After all, 
what did these things matter? There was only one 
thing on earth or heaven or sea that did matter; the 
thing that had happened in Port Hervey church. 
What was to come after I could not see. The 
impulse towards death that had at first possessed 
me was gone, and it had left nothing in its place. 
How was I going to live ? 

Of the rest of that night I will not speak. Look 
back yourself. Remember the one terrible night of 
your life the night that closed that day which 
changed all things, and left " life never the same 
again." . . . You could not tell it. Nor can I. 

It must have been very near the morning I, 
sitting as I had sat and lain for hours on the soft 
sand at the edge of the lagoon, with the night owls 
wailing behind me in the bush, and flying foxes 
scolding and scuffling in the paw-paw trees when 
the black tide that had overwhelmed me began its 
backward flow. There is always that backward 
flow; if not, few human beings would live to see 
thirty years. And its name is " After all. . . ." 

" After all. . . ." 

He was not dead. That was the one thing intol- 
erable, and it had not happened. He still inhabited 
the same earth; still saw the same suns rise and set; 
was still rich in the infinite possibilities of the years 
to come. Luke, indeed, might be dead. I, who 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 233 

had seen him confronting England's terrible strength 
for the second time, had little faith in the possibility 
of a second escape. But I felt that the death of my 
old boy comrade, or the man who claimed me for 
his wife, would sadden my life only, and with so 
much sadness overflowing it already, what was a 
little more or less ? 

England, Harry England, was, they said, a forger 
and a conscious bigamist; he had written a letter in 
another man's hand and falsely signed it; he had 
stood before the altar with me, knowing that he was 
not legally making me his wife. I could not realize 
these things. I told myself they were true; that 
there was no way of getting round the facts. . . . 

" Well, then," said the ebbing of the wave, " let 
them be true. Let it be true that he is utterly 
unworthy of your love. Let it be true that you can 
never hope to be his wife. Let all that, the worst 
possible, be true. It cannot alter the fact that you 
love him and he loves you, and you are alive on 
earth together. You never wish to see him again? 
Let it be so. Be content, if not content, resigned 
to: 

" Love as the angels may 
With the breadth of heaven betwixt you." 

At least, at last, at worst, you have love. . . . 

So said the ebbing of the tide. 

And Luke Ivory? What if no harm had hap- 
pened to him (please God, it had not) and if he 
were still determined to part myself and Harry 
England? 

Undoubtedly he could do so. It was just such a 
contingency as this that the marriage at Hiliwa Dara 
had been designed to prevent. Concerning that 
matter, I understood the law. 



234 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

Do you wonder that I had so much knowledge of 
divorce and its conditions? You would not had you 
ever lived in a Love Island. Divorce is the other 
half of the fruit, the other side of the shield, in those 
Circean lands. Even a convent-bred young girl like 
myself could not escape hearing the discussions of 
bonds broken and to be broken, of partners 
changed, of desertions, citations, and so forth that 
were only too frequent in Hawonga. I knew quite 
well that if I deserted Luke and refused to live with 
him he could divorce me, but that so long as he was 
willing to hold to the bond between us I had no 
power to break it. 

As to any elements of right and wrong in the 
matter I, though brought up with the ordinary decent 
woman's horror of divorce, could not feel that either 
right or wrong was in question here. This marriage 
of mine was no marriage in the sight of Heaven 
or I at least could not believe it to be so. Heaven 
might demand I believed it did that I should 
give up Harry. I could not think that any power 
above or below demanded that I should hand myself 
over to Luke instead. I should leave him, and 
refuse to have anything to do with him, and by and 
by, no doubt, I should die of a broken heart, and 
that would simplify everything for everybody. 

Of that mad leap to death I did not care now to 
think. I was ashamed of it. The ugly word 
" heredity " whispered in my ears you must 
remember that this was in the days when every fault 
or weakness of the parents was supposed to reappear 
inevitably in the children and I liked it no more 
than any other young thing likes the suggestion that 
he, or she, is not a being self-complete, owing naught 
to any one. I didn't want to think that I was my 



\ 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 235 

dead, foolish mother. I wanted to think that I was 
myself. 

So I put the remembrance of the leap over the 
cliff aside, and with it all thought of any other short 
cut out of my difficulties and sorrows. Of course, 
I should die some time soon, picturesquely, in a white 
robe and an armchair, like La Dame aux Camelias 
(of whom I had seen pictures), but that was another 
matter. Luke would be sorry; Harry, naturally, 
would break his heart and die, too; I thought I 
should like that, on the whole. . . . 

And in the midst of all this the curtain of the 
night rolled back, the sun leaped out of the lagoon, 
and I saw that I was alone. 

This was not the plantation group of islands. 
This was not any place that I knew anything about. 
So far as I could see from the low ground of the 
beach it had no signs of life. It seemed that I was 
marooned. 

In Europe the word means nothing; it is a mere 
archaism, like terms that deal with piracy. But in 
the world of Oceania, so much greater than the 
little segment that holds all civilization, thousands 
of miles away, many strange old words of sea life 
are living and active yet. Barratry you do not 
know, until I tell you, that that means ship murder, 
the killing and sinking of an innocent vessel; yet 
it is so common in the island world that the insur- 
ance companies take notice of it, and " load " policies 
to correspond with the risk. Mutiny it is an 
affair of boys' cheap stories to you in Europe. But 
to the man who runs his schooner with Melanesian 
labor, it is, sometimes, fights that fill decks with 
blood, and masts with dead, mutilated bodies tied 
to them, nodding and bowing to the roll of a 



236 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

deserted ship. Marooning you think it a buc- 
caneer word of West Indian pirate days. There are 
skulls bleaching white on far-out cays and atolls in 
the Pacific world that could tell another tale, an' if 
they spoke . . . 

I knew all about marooning. I recognized that 
it had befallen me. 

The light was growing clear; the palm trees stood 
as black as sticks of charcoal against an orange east. 
I gathered myself up and began to take stock of 
the situation. First, my hair was down, and my 
dress sea-wet and sun-dried in a state of ter- 
rible disorder. I did not see why I should be dirty 
and slovenly because I was marooned, so I twisted 
up my hair and put on my hat it had been with 
me when I woke up in the canoe; no doubt the 
natives had found it floating about and secured it. 
I rearranged my dress as far as possible; I pulled 
up my stockings and laced up my shoes, and started 
to explore. Even if life, as I had hitherto known 
it, had come to an end for me; if I had no future 
and an uncertain present still I had to find out 
where I was and what was going to happen to me, 
now, to-day. 

Being island reared I did not waste time attempt- 
ing to make my way through uncut forest. I picked 
out the largest tree in sight, saw that it was easy to 
climb, and started up it without further delay. The 
first thing necessary was a general view. Was the 
island large or small? Inhabited or uninhabited? 
Wooded or partly clear? I wondered, as I climbed 
from bough to bough, going higher and higher up, 
past the undergrowth of nutmeg and maidenhair 
palm and paw-paw trees, past the trunks and tops of 
half-grown cocoanuts and wild mango trees, aiming 
always at the pale blue patch of sky that showed 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 237 

among the topmost branches of the great ironwood 
I had chosen to climb. . . . 

And at last, clinging hard, and trembling a little 
for fear of the depth I saw beneath me, I came out 
in the highest fork of the tree, where it was thin and 
elastic, and shook to the rising wind. And I saw, 
low and bright and clear, the whole island extended 
underneath. 

It was small, partly cleared and partly forested. 
It was a solitary island; there was no other land in 
sight as far as I could see from the tall tree summit. 
And it was not uninhabited. 

"Oh, goodness gracious!" was my unromantic 
but natural cry. 

There was a house, about half a mile from the 
shore, standing in the midst of a good-sized clearing. 
It was a better house than one would have expected 
to see in that remote place two-storied, built 
solidly of what looked like white stone, but was, I 
knew, sawn coral from the reefs. I could not see 
any people moving about it, and no smoke went up 
from the cookhouse at the back. 

" They are late risers," I thought, beginning to 
scramble down the tree. " Thank Heaven for them, 
anyhow, whomever and whatever they are." 

There was a little way to walk along the beach 
before reaching the path that I had noted in my 
reconnoitering. I planned as I walked. The 
people who owned the place (I wondered what they 
did with it) would of course have some kind of a 
vessel; I had seen no signs of one, but she might 
have been sent away to Hawonga or Tahiti. I 
could borrow her to return to Port Hervey ... if 
I wanted to, of course. Did I want to? I was not 
entirely sure about this. I had not so far had time 
to plan what I was going to do with myself and my 



238 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

life which, of course, would not be long; there 
was that business of the white dressing gown and 
the thin, pathetic figure coughing and blessing in 
her chair somewhere not very far ahead. . . . 

Well, did I want to go back? 

I didn't know. I did know that I wanted tea 
and breakfast, and clean clothes, and a bed to lie 
down in. I wondered what the people would be 
like. 

I found the pathway, a winding track, cut through 
cool forest, and graveled with white coral. 

u They are tidy people, and like things to look 
nice," I thought. 

It was some way to the house. At a turn of the 
track I was confronted by a magnificent mass of 
bougainvillaea, arching across from side to side. The 
rustling blossoms, purple as a bishop's robe, had 
fallen so low in the center that they scarce left space 
for me to walk underneath. 

" They are artistic people," I thought with some 
wonder, for the training of the flowers had clearly 
taken thought and time. " But they should cut 
these Oh!" 

Before the drooping barrier of the flowers I 
stopped. It was not because a few great spikes of 
blossom, low-hanging, almost barred my way; a 
movement of my hand would have swept them aside. 
It was because I had seen a spider web one of the 
immense, yellow-silk webs of the tropic world 
stretched from blossom to blossom, right across the 
path. It was not a new web; it was several days or 
weeks old I could not tell which ; but the number 
of butterflies caught in it and, more, the presence of 
a bag of eggs, showed that it must have been in 
place some good while. 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 239 

" The people," I said, slowly and aloud this time. 
' The people are away." 

I put aside the web and hurried along the last 
few turns of the path. In the midst of a sea of early 
sunlight stood the house, white, silent, blind. Be- 
neath the veranda of the lower story ran a row of 
those long doors that take the place of windows in 
many Pacific houses; I supposed they had the usual 
glass upper panels, but all were protected by louvered 
shutters drawn across. The upper story was a 
repetition of the lower. The house looked to me to 
be new; indeed, the clearing itself, so far as I could 
judge, was not an old one here and there the 
traces of a " burn-off " were still visible. The 
house was not set on piles, but on a raised platform 
of stones sloped into a terrace. Among the stones 
grew numbers of small creeping plants with pink 
and white flowers. The pillars of the veranda were 
twined with purple bougainvillaea. 

" Whoever they are," I thought wonderingly, 
" they have a great fancy for bougainvillaea." I 
wished that the fancy had taken any other form ; the 
royal flowers reminded me too vividly of the little 
white bungalow in Hawonga, and all that had hap- 
pened there. . . . 

" I must not think," I said to myself, " or I shall 
go mad. I'll find out all about this house; that will 
keep me from remembering for a little while." 

A strange figure I must have looked, had any been 
there to see, that early, beautiful morning. My 
clothes were stained and torn, my hat was broken, 
my hair in a long plait trailed down below my waist. 
On the empty space of the concreted veranda floor 
my shoes went tapping, tapping with a noise that 
seemed curiously loud, as I went from door to door, 



240 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

trying the fastenings of the shutters and finding, in 
every case, that they were secure. 

" But I must get in," I said to myself. " If I can 
get in I shall be queen of the whole island, and live 
as I like, and no one, no one at all, will come to 
trouble me for ever so long." The idea, as French 
people say, " sang to me." 

Apart from all that I had felt and suffered in the 
last few days apart from the wounded creature's 
impulse to hide itself I was gripped by an emotion, 
a fancy, known to almost all mankind. Who had 
not had the dream of finding a deserted house some- 
where very far away a house all prepared for 
living in, but empty of inhabitants? Who has not 
pictured to himself the royalty of sole possession? 

This fairy tale had hold of me. I almost forgot 
my troubles in hunting, breathlessly, for an opening; 
in regretting that none could be found; in running 
to the woodshed and fetching the wood ax that I 
knew would be there and battering, with all the 
strength in my healthy young arms, at the shutter 
that covered one of the doors. 

It gave way easily enough; in the islands fasten- 
ings are not made to stand a siege. It disclosed, as 
I had expected, the usual pattern of glass-paneled 
door, locked inside. 

This was a disappointment. I might, of course, 
break the glass, but I could not easily get through 
the opening of the pane. Besides, some instinct 
I scarcely know what warned me not to denude 
the house of its defenses by rendering a door 
useless. 

" They would not take the keys away with them," 
I thought. " There would be no sense in that. 
They've hidden them. And, of course, they only 
hid them to keep them from wandering natives, so 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 241 

they won't have hidden them very cleverly. Now 
where would I put the keys if I were locking up to 
go away? " 

I walked all round the house and through the 
woodshed. No likely looking hiding place com- 
mended itself to my fancy until I reached the range 
of corrugated iron tanks that received the water 
from the roof. 

' That will be it," I said, and immediately crept 
under the tanks. Beneath the third tank, hung by a 
leathern string, I found the missing keys. 

The door that I had unshuttered was not hard to 
open; I found its key almost at once. I almost ran 
into the house. It was such an adventure ! 

. . . Darkness and dust and long rays of sunshine 
slanting through the louvers. A large room front, 
a large room back. Smaller rooms, oblong in shape, 
at each end. Furniture and ornaments showing 
out, as one's eyes got accustomed to the gloom. A 
billiard table in one of the small rooms. In the 
front large room, a polished floor, shining like water 
in the darkness of deep forest; rugs of lion and 
leopard skins; clubs and spears and savage helmets 
of forms unknown to me upon the walls; I saw here 
none of the cane and basket furniture almost in- 
evitably found in island houses. The chairs and 
couches were of carved brown wood, inlaid with 
figures of pearl. A faint, delicious smell pervaded 
the whole room. I could not name it at first, until 
I bent in the dusk to examine the pearl inlay upon an 
armchair, and then I recognized it for sandalwood. 
The whole suite was sandalwood, the rare, the 
treasured. . . . 

" It must have cost goodness knows what," I 
thought, going on with my investigations. 

There were no ornaments in the room save two, 



242 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

the Venus of Cnidus and the " Boxer " from the 
Vatican, magnificently reproduced, not in marble, but 
in wood. A touch of genius, truly, this last choice ; 
marble in an island home would have looked hope- 
lessly out of place, while in wood the Boxer's 
gnarled, majestic seated figure, and the voluptuous 
beauty of the Venus, stooping slightly on her ped- 
estal, answered with harmonious tones of brown to 
the rest of the brown room. 

I looked at the Boxer with tempered admiration; 
I thought him great but brutal. The Venus not 
one in spite of her celebrity usually chosen for 
drawing-rooms troubled me somewhat. I did 
not wish her to be there; it seemed somehow or 
other to be " like her cheek . . ." though I could 
not have said why. The mind of a girl is a curious 
compound. . . . 

Upholstery there was none; no prudent furnisher 
uses it, in countries where centipedes and scorpions 
abound but cushions of blood-colored satin, larger 
than I had ever thought cushions could be, were scat- 
tered recklessly everywhere. 

The walls were paneled in a certain beautiful 
island wood, deep rose in color, veined like some ex- 
quisite mineral, and faintly scented like a flower. 
I do not know its name; I think it has never seen the 
European markets. The tables in the room 
there were but one or two were sandalwood and 
cedar. Evidently the owners of the place, whoever 
they might be, had a liking for beautiful tropic 
woods, and a fine taste in selecting them. 

I stood in the center of the room, my eyes, by 
now, accustomed to the cool dim light that filtered 
through the louvers, and looked at it all with sat- 
isfaction. I almost felt as if I owned it. 

" They must be interesting people," I thought, 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 243 

recalling the usual well-to-do island home, with its 
glass and brass hanging lamps, its suites of tortured 
basketwork cushioned with screaming plush, its erup- 
tions of " hand-painted " landscapes in gilt frames, 
and staring photograph enlargements, and idiot-asy- 
lum pictures of the eternal baby and eternal dog. . . . 

The room that corresponded was a dining room. 
I pulled back a door and opened a shutter or so, to 
get a good look at what seemed the strangest and 
most original room I had ever seen. 

It was all dead white and dead black. White-ce- 
mented floor, with lines and corners of black tiles; 
rugs of black skins; chairs, tables, and sideboard of 
island ebony, in plain, massive "mission" style; 
white-enameled walls. Round the top of the room, 
under the white wood ceiling, ran the sole note of 
brilliant color a narrow band of orange, edged 
with black. There were two pictures, large oil 
paintings framed in black, and set into the wall at 
each end. One represented an Arctic scene 
snow, icebergs, Polar bears; the other was an ex- 
traordinary and (to me) alarming picture of a 
graveyard in deep night, each pale ghost seated on 
its own tomb, beside its marble statue or broken col- 
umn. The spirit figures were drinking and pledging 
one another, with bows, and lifting up of shadowy 
goblets. It must have been a copy of an eighteenth 
century picture, for all the ghosts wore the olress of 
Watteau's day wigs that seemed made of mist 
and cloud; long coats and spreading hoops, trans- 
parent as steam; there were even the ghosts of 
patches on phantom cheeks, and spectral fans that 
waved in no mortal wind. Snow was on the ground, 
and an icy moon looked down. 

I did not know what to think of this " memento 
mori " over a dinner table. I shut the louvers 



244 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

again, locked the doors, and went upstairs, wonder- 
ing what kind of a house I had come into. 

There were other surprises waiting. The first 
room I entered was a woman's. 

The furniture here was much more commonplace 
than in the rest of the house, but (to my eyes) much 
pleasanter; pale blue walls and matting, patterned 
with white lilies; white and blue dressing table with 
silver handles; immense triple cheval glass (I fled 
from the ragged, untidy image it gave back to me), 
bright Alma-Tadema and Albert Moore reproduc- 
tions, framed in silver girls and marble terraces 
and flowers. There was a delightful little bath- 
room, with a white bath supplied from an overhead 
tank; a long wardrobe, rich in hooks, drawers, and 
shelves. I noticed that the furniture was covered 
in pale blue linen, lily-embroidered. 

" I like her," was my comment. " Almost any 
woman would have had silk in such a room and 
that would have spoiled it. How fond she is of 
lilies!" 

For all the toilet china and the pretty dressing- 
table set were patterned with white lilies, and the 
blue matting on the floor, and the linen window cur- 
tains white without, blue within, were lily woven, 
lily-embroidered. There was nothing very original, 
perhaps nothing artistic, about the room, but it de- 
lighted me. It was the very soul of a girl. 

I began to grow curious about this unknown 
woman. I peered and pried shamelessly. She had 
left a lot of shoes in the white, silver-hinged and 
handled shoe cupboard what shoes ! kid, satin, 
patent leather, morocco, linen again. . . . 

" Oh! " I cried, laying greedy hands on two pairs 
at once a pair of suede, silver-buckled, exquisite 
blue-green in color; a linen pair, with lily-broidered 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 245 

toes. " I simply must try these. But they'll be 
too big." For I was proud of my slender two, with 
the high arch and the delicate ankle, so difficult to 
fit. 

" Oh! " I said again, in a different tone. " She 
has as small a foot as I have." I felt almost disap- 
pointed. I sat there with the shoes in my hand, 
wondering what she was like: was she married or 
single; how many people lived with her out here; 
why they lived in such a place; why one had never 
heard of them. . . . 

I put back the shoes the oddest thing about 
them was that none of them seemed to have been 
worn and peeped within the wardrobe and the 
drawers. They contained no clothes, but a num- 
ber of beautiful pieces of silk, crepe, embroidered 
lawn and linen, pineapple gauze from the Philip- 
pines, flowery stuffs from Canton. 

" She took her clothes with her when she went," 
I thought. " Or perhaps " 

The unworn shoes, the silent, untenanted room 
seemed to take on a different aspect, with the 
thought that came to me. 

" Perhaps she is dead." 

It seemed to me that she must be dead. Now 
that I had thought of it, everything fitted in with 
the idea. I had already noticed that this little room 
was curiously unused and fresh, compared with the 
others, which had apparently seen some wear. 
" She has died," I thought. " And they shut up 
her room, just as she left it, and never used it again. 
I shall call her Lily." 

The romantic thought stayed with me, as I looked 
into the other rooms on the top story. I did not 
find them so interesting; perhaps because I was be- 
ginning to feel the effects of fatigue and hunger. 



246 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

The largest room was a bedroom, not newly fur- 
nished; a curious, bare, handsome place, running 
right from back to front, and opening on to the 
verandas with great glass doors that could be slid 
entirely away. It had an immense Dutch bed, of 
the kind familiar to Malaysian travelers seven 
or eight feet square, so as to leave ample room for 
coolness and comfort on the hottest night. The net 
was rolled away. The four posts that commonly 
supported it were made of four New Hebridean 
idols, with grinning teeth, tongues protruded, and 
eyes of mother-o'-pearl. 

There was no washstand, but across one corner of 
one room, on a stand of heavy carved wood, had 
been fixed one of the cockle-shaped Tridacna shells 
that island people know, whiter than any marble, 
deeply fluted inside and out, and fully three feet 
across. Smaller shells, and carved cocoanuts dark 
with age and hard polishing, were fixed above the 
great white basin of the clam, to hold different kinds 
of toilet apparatus. But the bath in the corner op- 
posite fairly took my breath away. It was set on 
a bed of white cement; a shower had been hung 
above. It was about seven feet in length, and it was 
a shell another Tridacna Giga, of the long vari- 
ety, ice-white, and immensely fluted. I don't know 
what it could have weighed. I have never seen an- 
other like it, but I have heard of one in a reef 
passage between two of the Solomon Islands, known 
to and coveted by more than one traveler, but unat- 
tainable, because it could not be loosened from its 
deep-sea bed without the aid of divers, diving 
dresses, tools, and a powerful crane. . . . 

Apart from this unique washing apparatus, the 
room contained nothing at all but a few sets of 
dumb-bells ranged on the wall, a long slip of mirror 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 247 

close to them, and a number of weapons, swords, 
rapiers, sabers, bayonets, daggers, fencing foils, ar- 
ranged in circles and stars. There was no carpet on 
the scrubbed white floor. There w*as only one ta- 
ble, of white wood, sanded clean; there were two 
plain white wood chairs. The room, with its glass 
doors thrown back, and the all but perpetual south- 
easter howling through, would have realized every 
ideal of a hygienic specialist of the fiercest kind. 

Like all shut-up-rooms, it was a little musty now, 
suggesting dust and paint and hardened soap. 
There was just a whiff of tobacco somewhere or 
other. 

I ran across to the last room. This was a library, 
full of books protected by air-tight, glass cases. 

"Pooh!" I said, glancing at the titles. They 
seemed ineffably " stuffy." . . . 

By now I was almost starving, and food was the 
only thing I could think about. 

" That fourth room downstairs will be the store," 
I said, jingling my keys. It was. I found plenty of 
tinned goods of all kinds, and a number of different 
sorts of biscuits; jars of tea and coffee, sugar, and 
all sorts of groceries. There was also a Primus 
stove and a store of kerosene. 

" Well, we sha'n't starve here," I said to myself, 
with satisfaction. I had just discovered something 
that delighted me, and gave me a still better opinion 
of the defunct " Lily " and her tastes a small 
press full of candies of many kinds, chocolates, 
creams, preserved fruits. . . . 

" But I think you were a little greedy, Lily," I 
remarked, filling my mouth with fondant. " You 
laid in plenty when you were at it. Perhaps you 
ate too many of them, and that was what finished 
you off." 



248 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

The supply was certainly large, and astonishingly 
varied. I wondered more than ever what these peo- 
ple could have been like, who had uncarpeted rooms, 
and bought copies of Vatican masterpieces; who 
stocked the pantry with the contents of a confection- 
er's shop, yet kept almost no wine and spirits, where 
the ordinary island house would have had a liberal 
store. I had noticed that there was only one case of 
light beer, a few bottles of whiskey on a top shelf, 
and a dozen or two of some sweet Spanish wine. 
This, in an out-of-the-way spot where ships could call 
very seldom, was almost a certificate of temperance. 

The kitchen, separated from the house, after 
tropic fashion, was well stocked with cooking ap- 
paratus, and I found a set of excellent Pekin china. 
I brought in the Primus, made myself tea, and 
warmed up the contents of one or two tins. It was 
the first real meal I had had for more than thirty 
hours, and it refreshed me. When I had done, the 
world took on a brighter look. 

" Things will come right," I told myself, with the 
optimism of youth. " They will come right because 
they simply must. Nobody's dead I am sure I 
should feel it if any one were. And Luke will have 
to let me go. I don't see," I went on, " why he 
should not; I've more than an idea that he and Lor- 
raine have taken a silly fancy to one another. Why, 
of course that will put things straight. ... Of 
course." 

" And in the meantime," I thought, wandering 
out of the kitchen again, along the covered passage 
that led to the back veranda, " in the meantime, 
look what's happened. I've found this lovely place, 
to be all alone in, away from every one, until they 
find me again. Why, it is just what I would have 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 249 

wished, if I'd ever thought of such a thing. Alone 
alone I How delightful it is to be alone." 

It occurred to me now that I had never been 
alone in my life. Never had I lived in any house 
where there was not some well-known presence al- 
ways within sight or hearing, generally within actual 
touch. Never had I been able to do exactly what I 
liked rise when I liked, sleep when I chose, eat 
when and what I preferred, stand and stare in the 
glass as long as I wished, without danger of inter- 
ruption from people who never would understand 
that one was not admiring one's beauty (as older 
folk always think) but simply trying, for the fiftieth 
time, to discover the one and only perfect way of 
doing one's hair. . . . 

Well, it was mine at last to do exactly as I 
pleased. I was alone. 

"Hurrah!" I shouted, clapping my hands, and 
striking my foot on the veranda. Then I stopped 
suddenly, and was silent, my arms hanging down at 
my sides, my mouth a little open, my eyes staring. 

What was it? 

I didn't know. There was nothing in front of me 
but the empty, sunburned space of the clearing be- 
fore the house, russet-colored, full of midday light as 
a lake valley is full of water. But I had felt, just 
for an instant, as if the place had a personality; as if 
it looked at me. . . . 

I did not like the feeling at all; it was indescrib- 
able, but dismaying. I pretended to myself, with 
more or less success, that I had not felt anything. 

' There's too much sun here," I thought. 

'There's too much something I don't know. 

. . . Oh, I think I shall go upstairs again and hunt 

Lily's room for clothes. I sha'n't be able to go on 



250 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

long with what I stand up in." I made a great deal 
of noise as I went upstairs again. Curiously, I did 
not want to make it, but I obliged myself. 

In Lily's room, after a good deal of hunting 
about, I found a drawer full of beautiful kimonos, 
many-colored as butterflies. 

' They are far too good," was my thought, as I 
turned over the embroidered crepes, the gold-crusted 
silks. " But they will do all right; the thin ones will 
make underclothing, with just a little cutting and 
stitching up." Lily's sewing machine I had already 
found; it was a small one of the kind alleged " si- 
lent," and it had scissors and thread in the drawers. 
' What did they do with her stockings when she 
died? " I wondered. " She must have had lots of 
lovely ones, with all those shoes Oh !"...! 
had found the stockings, underneath the last of the 
kimonos. I don't know how many pairs there were. 
All were of real silk; we had no artificial silk in those 
years. 

" I wonder," I said to myself, holding up a pair of 
Lily's stockings to the light, and admiring the pearly- 
blue color and the white butterfly on the instep, " if 
Lily was really quite, quite respectable? These 
stockings seem almost too Well, I never ! " 

The pair I had unearthed this time were sea-shell 
pink, and they had a silver-gray mouse embroidered 
halfway up the leg! 

"Nowl am perfectly certain she was not," I said 
virtuously. " No respectable girl would wear such 
things." I pulled off my own stockings and put on 
the wicked pink things with the wicked mouse (it 
made it worse that there was no mouse on the sec- 
ond stocking). I liked myself in them very well. 

14 I'll keep them on; I have had no clean stockings 
to-day," I said to myself. " One must have clean 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 251 

stockings!" But I had to take them off when I 
went to the bathroom for a bath, and a change into a 
selection of Lily's doubtfully moral clothes. I tied 
up all deficiencies with a sash cut off one of the 
lengths of silk, and surveyed myself in the glass. 

" Dear me, I put on the stockings again," I 
thought. " Well, I shall keep them for a bit. 
What a pity there's no one here. I do like that 
kimono and sash." Then I remembered that I was, 
of course, very glad indeed to be alone. . . . 

It was because the shoes were so high-heeled, I 
told myself, that I did not put any of them on. I 
liked better I was sure I did to walk about on 
the smooth floors and verandas of the mysterious 
house, silent, stocking shod. 

It was wearing on in the afternoon now, and 
things began to look different. I had not guessed 
they could change so, in the course of a few hours. 
I had not known that the yellow of the low sun 
could seem wicked, and the trees turn poisonous 
green; that the sea, as night drew on, could sound so 
much louder, without change of weather or wind. 
It talked, I thought, away down there on the empty 
shore, of Death and Eternity. I had sought Death 
and Eternity, not many hours before; but now the 
names of them terrified me. 

I was afraid. Of what, I did not know. Who 
that has met with what I met, in the lonely places 
of the earth, can name the thing he fears? 

I went into the house before the sun had touched 
the horizon; I found the lamps and lighted one. I 
collected some provisions, and took them with me 
into Lily's room. It was the smallest; I thought I 
should like to sleep there. I got a mosquito net, 
made up a bed on the low couch, and locked all the 
doors. I shut the shutters as well. It was hot 



252 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

when I had closed out the free night wind from the 
room, but I was prepared to bear heat. I was even 
prepared to bear the extra heat of the great kero- 
sene lamp I had brought in with me; there could be 
no putting it out till day. 

Down and down went the sun. I could tell its 
going by the wicked yellow rays that crept under- 
neath the closed door of my room, as the sunset 
waned to dark. 

" The night comes on that knows no morn." . . . 

Mariana's wail had nothing to do with me; but 
the line haunted me ; I could not away with it. As I 
lay sleepless, appalled by I knew not what, hour 
after hour, hearing the sea talk, the shutters strain- 
ing in the wind, the long grasses rustle and rustle out 
beyond the house, as if something were pressing 
them aside, I said to myself, again and again: 

"The night comes on; the night comes on that 
knows no morn." 



CHAPTER XII 

WHEN I awoke in the morning, after a few 
hours' troubled sleep, and saw the great lamp 
blazing away in the daylight, which had forced itself 
beneath doors and shutters, I could not understand 
why I had been so foolish as to be frightened. 
What was there to be afraid of, in a quiet island 
like this? I got up and dressed, ate my breakfast, 
and went out to explore. If I could assure myself, 
in the bright morning hours, that the whole island 
was as safe and as pleasant as Hiliwa Dara itself, 
then, I thought, I should not be troubled by nervous 
fears when the dark came down once more. 

Doubtless, I made a curious figure, starting out 
for my tour in a selection of " Lily's " beautiful silk 
negligees, tied together by a big blue sash, and 
crowned by the unhappy remains of my white sailor 
hat. But I was assured that there was nobody to 
see. 

I went down to the beach, and climbed the big 
ironwood once more, making, this time, a more de- 
tailed survey of the place. I judged the island to be 
about a mile and a half long, by a mile in breadth. 
The cleared portion much exceeded the forested 
part, there was only about a quarter of a mile of 
heavy timber. I thought, on the whole, that the 
island had never been very heavily forested; its grass- 
lands looked almost natural. In the center, there 
was something like gray ruins that excited my curi- 
osity; I promised myself I would explore it. I 
could see no traces of a plantation anywhere. 

253 



254 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

There were a few rough fences, suggesting provision 
for cattle ; but no beasts were to be seen. 

"If they are going to plant, they will have the 
boys' houses up by this time," I thought; and I 
looked for the ranges of brown roofs one expects to 
see near a plantation house. I saw one roof only. 

' That would not put up more than twenty or 
thirty boys," I thought, with the critical feeling of 
one who was an owner herself. " I don't think 
much of their manager. He seems to have done 
himself and his family pretty well, but left the place 
to look after itself. . . . Unless, perhaps, he is a 
shelter. . . . But the beach would smell of pearl 
shell, and besides I saw nothing that looked like it 
about the reef." 

Indeed it seemed that, so far as one could judge, 
the island was a home and nothing more. Certain 
clearings and carryings of earth suggested that a gar- 
den had been under way when the owner left the 
place. There was a nice little jetty on the side 
nearly opposite to that by which I had come. I 
noted a patch of young bananas, set out in a shallow 
gully; and a wide space of earth was netted over 
with the level green of the sweet potato. 

One thing that I saw puzzled me extremely. It 
looked like a road that led to nowhere at all. I had 
decided to spend the day exploring the island, and I 
noted this down for the first place to be investigated. 

Then I climbed down again from the tree, with a 
map of the island fairly marked out in my head, and 
started. 

I found the mysterious road; but when I had 
found it, I was not any wiser. It was about three 
yards wide, very well made of beaten earth and sand, 
with a slight rise in the center to throw off rain. It 
had a sort of guidepost at the beginning, but there 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 255 

was no inscription on the post. I walked along it 
to the end it took me ten or twelve minutes 
and found that the road broke short off into low 
bush and sand. Near the far end, there was an- 
other guidepost, also unmarked. Beyond, there 
was nothing that a road should lead to only a 
rough bit of hill and dale going down to the beach. 
I could not make it out at all. 

The ruins were the next place to investigate. 
They were farther off than they seemed to be; I 
was hot and tired with toiling under the fierce sun, 
by the time I reached them. It was delightful to 
take refuge, like a spent swimmer come ashore, un- 
der the cool winnowing of the windy trees that stood 
about the stones, rooting themselves among the 
fallen masonry, and leaning out from heights of 
piled-up stone. 

I recognized the spot at once for a burial place of 
the semi-mythic chiefs, or gods, of prehistoric times. 
There are several such places in the Pacific, and 
though I had not visited any, I had seen photographs 
of some. This seemed almost an exact copy of the 
Tui-Tongan tombs, in the Friendly Group. an 
immense square of gray-stone blocks, set in a ter- 
race, with a second and a third terrace, diminishing 
in size, set upon it. As in the case of the Tui-Ton- 
gan graves, the stones had no counterpart upon the 
island, and seemed to have been brought, with labor 
well-nigh incredible, from some distant place across 
the sea. 

I looked at them without much interest. I have 
always disliked antiquities of any and every kind; 
they are, to my mind, inevitably bound up with 
boresome people and books that are a weariness to 
read. Perhaps I should be ashamed of this. I 
don't know. I only know that nine people out of 



256 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

ten feel as I do, though they are, usually, unwilling 
to say so. ... 

There was one aspect of this discovery, however, 
that gave me something to think about. Such 
graves, I knew, are held extremely sacred by all 
Pacific people, even by those known nominally as 
Christians. The existence of a " Tui-Tongan " on 
the island explained why it had never been made into 
a plantation. No native would have signed on to 
work in such a sacred place. It was remarkable 
enough that any natives had been induced even to do 
house-building, within call of a Tui-Tongan grave. 

" Whoever They are," I said (I had come to call 
the mysterious owners " They " in my mind) " they 
can't intend doing anything useful with the place. 
It would be impossible. But if They live here, why 
don't they live here? Why have they gone away? " 

It did not take me more than an hour or two to 
walk all round. I went by the beach, climbing here 
and there over barriers of rocks, but finding the way 
easy, on the whole. The island seemed to me most 
lovely. I liked the way the forest ran right down 
to the strand, in places, with exquisite small green 
lawns enclosed between groves of maupei and utu 
trees, and pink flowers growing in the grass. When 
you stood in one of these enclosed green glades, with 
dark forest to left and right, and sea and white, 
white sand before you, you felt as if you had found 
the lost Garden of Eden, and as if you were Eve, 
with no serpent and no Adam and no Fall. 

And you did not want Adam even if you were, 
as I was, a girl who had lost her lover but two days 
before. . . . There is much more than meets the 
eye in the old Diana myth; in the old tales of dryads 
and oreads. You will note that the satyrs and the 
fauns wanted drink and love-making, even in their 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 257 

forests; not so the followers of the silver crescent, 
or the maids of forest and hill. I don't know what 
there is in a girl that so loves the empty woods, the 
lonely sea, without thought of anything or any one 
beyond. But I know that, whatever it is, it exists. 

That morning, I tasted strange pleasures, de- 
lights without name; I fed on honey dews and magic 
fruits. . . . 

What is the use of trying to tell the untellable? 
You must go to a desert island to find it out; and 
that you will not do. 

About noon, being entirely healthy, and a little 
wearied, I felt all other thoughts and fancies merge 
in the one basic need of human nature food. I 
finished my circular tour hurriedly there was not 
much to see, in the latter part and got back to 
the house. 

It seemed like home when I reached it. More, 
it seemed like my home; I have wondered since 
whether Columbus ever felt such a sense of pro- 
prietorship in his new world as I found, at first, 
on my deserted island? 

Lily and They were becoming shadowy to me 
now. I was the owner. I walked about the house, 
after I had eaten, with my hands behind me, criti- 
cizing and planning; aware, at the back of my mind, 
that it was only a kind of game, but nevertheless 
absorbed in the fancy of the moment. 

I would leave the Boxer in the drawing-room, I 
thought. There was something in his massive 
strength that I liked and he was not a beauty- 
man, which was so much to the good. Photographs 
of the Antinoiis, the Apollo Belvedere, the Hermes 
of Praxiteles, had always left me cold. But I felt, 
somehow, drawn to this dignified villain of the 
Vatican, 



258 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

The Cnidian Venus oh, but she was exquisite 

I would not have. I still felt that it something 

was " like her cheek." I almost wanted to slap 
her. " Stay in your gallery," I thought. " Nobody 
wants you here." 

The Arctic picture should remain certainly. And 
the other, the cold ghosts coldly feting one another 
under an icy moon well, it was calculated to give 
one shivers of two different kinds, moral and physi- 
cal, so, perhaps, in this world of burning heats, it 
might not be so ill placed. But I resolved I would 
never go into the room after sundown. 

Sundown! The word struck me unpleasantly. 
Sundown it was a lonely, eerie-sounding name. 
There was some poetry I had once begun to read 
Walt Whitman's I remembered that Lorraine 
had taken the volume away. But I recalled a 
line : 

" Where the shadows of sundown fall, on the limitless 
and lonesome prairie." 

That was like it. Like the tolling of a bell 
slow tolling, far away. Tolling for the dying of the 
day, for the coming of the night. 

Again, the white high sun rays were beginning to 
slant low; to turn, as they slanted, into wicked yel- 
low. Again the happy green of the bush was grow- 
ing vivid, poison-colored. It was the dusk again; it 
was another night. Hypnotized into stillness, I sat 
and watched it come, and said to myself, dry- 
lipped: 

" The night comes on that knows no morn." . . . 

1 went to bed at seven. That night I scarcely 
slept at all, until the dawn, at half-past five, began, 
as before, to strike beneath closed shutters and 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 259 

locked doors. Then I got up, opened the room, put 
out the lamp, and, wondering, as before, why I had 
been frightened, lay down and slept, really slept, till 
the sun was high. 

I cannot write nor would you care to read, if 
I could all the history of the week that came 
after. By the end of it, I was two people, living in 
two worlds. In the morning, before twelve, I was 
myself, Dara Hamilton, left alone on an island, ex- 
pecting to be found and fetched very soon, and con- 
tented almost to occupy herself meantime with 
the sewing, the cooking, the washing up and putting 
away and cleaning and mending and tidying, that 
belonged to her solitary estate. As soon as the sun 
began to pass the meridian, another creature peeped 
out in my mind. By four o'clock, when day was vis- 
ibly declining, though still bright, the creature was 
gaining the upper hand, and taking her place in 
an island that was fast changing into a spot quite 
other than the island of ten o'clock in the morning. 
When six o'clock was past, and the last change in the 
light began, I used to sit, fascinated, trembling, on 
the terrace to watch the enchanted dreadful yellow 
and the sinister green come out; to see the sun sink, 
sink, drop, with a horrid swiftness, down behind the 
sea, and let the flood of darkness loose upon the 
world. 

Then, with the terrors of night in full cry behind 
me, I fled to Lily's room, and exorcised my demons, 
as far as I could, with lamps and locked doors, with 
some of the despised books, even they were not 
all so dry as they seemed, and sometimes even 
availed to make me forget the miseries that held me. 
But not one of them ever drove away the persisting, 
haunting line from " Mariana " that bid fair, in 
those days, to drive me mad: 



260 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

" The night comes on that knows no morn." . . . 

So I learned the other side of the night world 
that, in Hawonga, the Love Island, had seemed so 
fair to me. . . . 

Eight days after my coming, I started out for a 
walk, very early in the morning. I was bound for 
a spot only half an hour from the house the 
pretty little lawn surrounded by forest, and running 
down to the sea, that I had admired on the day of 
my coming to the island. But I would not have 
dared to start late; my one fear, in these days, was 
that I might somehow or other be delayed on a 
ramble, and slip, while I was still far from shelter, 
over the edge of midday into the rapids of after- 
noon that ran down to the terrible Niagara of night. 

I reached the lawn while it was still cool ; the dew, 
in that shady place, had not yet dried off the grass. 
I had brought a book with me, and work, and some 
chocolates and biscuits, so that I should not need to 
return to the house for food. I did not care to 
stay too much in that house. It was, at night, a 
tower of strength to me, but in the sunny, empty 
day, I did not like the sound of my footsteps about 
its deserted rooms and passages. I had taken more 
and more to the habit of walking about in my stock- 
ings; but even that did not altogether remove the 
curious feeling always, more or less present, that I 
must not make a noise I must not be heard. . . . 
Why, I could not have told, to save my life. 

So, in the daytime which, for me, meant the 
hours of the sun's upward flight I wandered about 
here and there, looked for ships, gathered shells, and 
wondered why nobody had yet found out where I 
was and come to take me away. They would be 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 261 

sure to find out before long, I was certain. I wished 
they would make haste. . . . 

The lawn and the bay were still and pleasant; 
there was a scent of pandanus flowers, like helio- 
trope and new-mown hay; the parrakeets, red and 
green, were making a chuckling sound among the utu 
trees. I put down my load of books and work and 
eatables, and went to the beach, to see if any shells 
had been thrown up in the night. It was, I had dis- 
covered, the best beach in the island for shells. 

I found no shells; there had been, in the night, one 
of those high, sweeping tides that leave little or 
nothing behind them. Disappointed, I climbed on 
a group of rocks, and looked into the hollow they en- 
closed. There might be something there. . . . 

There was. There was the remains of a fire. 

Only a handful of blackened sticks and white, new 
ashes; but the sight of it struck me like a bolt of 
hot steel. It meant that other people had been 
probably were at that moment on the island; and 
that they were people who, for one reason or an- 
other, desired to conceal the fact of their presence. 

Robinson Crusoe, when he found the footprint 
on his lonely beach, cannot have felt more dismay 
than I felt then. I sprang down from the rocks, 
and looked, with thumping heart, for other signs 
of the person, or persons, who had lighted the be- 
traying fire. I found none, but the high tide of 
the night was enough to account for that. Exam- 
ining the fire a second time, I saw a fishbone or two, 
lying half calcined in the ashes. This relieved me a 
little; it might be that the fire had been made by 
some fishing party, or canoe-load of natives travel- 
ing from island to island, who had landed on the 
beach to cook a catch of fish, and gone away again. 



262 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

In truth, I had not seen any other signs of life about 
the place. 

I went back to the house as fast as I could go, and 
from the upper veranda scanned the island. I 
could overlook almost everything but the quarter 
mile of forest. There was nothing moving; no 
smoke anywhere; no boat in sight. I wondered if I 
could have been dreaming. And yet that fire 
was unmistakably recent. I had even found a sem- 
blance of heat in the ashes, when I raked them to the 
bottom with my fingers. 

Now I had something new to think about; yet I 
found myself more than ever troubled by the ap- 
proach of night. Nothing seemed to matter half 
so much in daylight. I began to realize the full 
meaning of the many prayers which feeble humanity 
addresses to its many deities, begging for protection 
from the dangers of the dark. Since childhood, I 
had felt these prayers, vaguely, to be something of 
an anachronism ; a survival of the Middle Ages . . . 
In the days upon my desert island no longer des- 
ert, as I feared I understood that, century with 
century, human nature and human needs do not 
change. 

I barricaded my doors that night with all the fur- 
niture I could move. I slept but little, and every 
time I closed my eyes I opened them again with a 
start, fancying I had heard stealthy steps some- 
where below, fumbling hands about my door. In 
the morning, as usual, all night fears seemed foolish, 
and I made up my mind to disregard what I had 
seen. It could have been nothing but a fire built by 
some passing crew of a canoe. There were various 
big islands somewhere about this part of the seas, 
planted with cocoanuts and with rubber. A labor 
vessel might have gone by in the night, carrying 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 263 

hands to or from the plantations, and some of the 
crew might have landed for an hour or so. 

It sounded very well, till the sun began to decline. 
Then, as usual, my mind took its evening turn, and I 
saw fear in every leaf, and horror in every shadow. 
I should suppose that many people, left utterly alone 
as I was I mean really alone, without even a na- 
tive within sight or reach must have had just such 
experiences of the mind's strange rise and fall, with 
the sunward and nightward roll of the earth, as I 
had. But perhaps they are too proud as I am 
not to tell of it. 

The second night was as bad as the first, with more 
reason. I had fallen asleep, worn out with two 
nights' wakefulness, when something, I did not know 
what, aroused me, and I lay for some time frozen, 
afraid to move or breathe. The lamp was low; I 
had turned it down, these two nights, for fear of at- 
tracting attention. It gave scarcely any light, so 
that the strips of sky, star-jeweled, which showed 
between the louvers of the shutters were clearly vis- 
ible. While I was lying, still as the dead, breathing 
quickly, yet suppressing my breath as much as pos- 
sible, I saw, suddenly, the stars disappear through- 
out a long, narrow section of the louvers, and as sud- 
denly reappear. There was not a sound not 
even a trembling of the floor but I knew that 
some one, in that moment, had come to my window, 
paused, tried to look in, and gone by. 

Had it he succeeded? I could not tell. 
The tiny blue point of flame might or might not 
have been enough to see my figure by. I thought 
not on the whole, but I would have given much for 
courage enough to rise and turn out the light alto- 
gether. I found it not. Instead, I lay horribly 
still, and made one more unpleasant discovery in 



264 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

addition to the many that had crowded on me of late 
namely, that the phrase " sweating with fear " 
was no metaphor. I perspired, lying there motion- 
less, as if I had been climbing a mountain in broad 
day. 

There never was a night on earth so long. When 
day came at last, I ran to the mirror to look at my 
hair. I was convinced that it must have turned all 
white, like the hair of people in stories. . . . There 
was not so much as one silver thread. I did not 
know whether I was disappointed, or not. 

All that day, I never stirred from the house. I 
tried to read and sew, but I could not. I wandered 
restlessly up and down from story to story, looking 
out through one after another of the shuttered win- 
dows, afraid to rest, afraid to eat, almost afraid to 
think. For now I knew that there were men on the 
island, and I knew that that night they would re- 
turn. My only hope was that they might not yet be 
sure whether I was alone or not. Without doubt, 
that had been the errand of the scout who had vis- 
ited me last night. 

What the men might be, I tried to persuade my- 
self at first I did not know. But when the sun 
began to slant to the west, and my cowering night 
mind to come forth, I acknowledged, with cold hor- 
ror, that I knew but too well. They were Malaita 
men. 

Only Pacific people know how much, even in 
these present days, is meant by the name. Malaita 
is one of the largest of the Solomon group; its na- 
tives were, and still are, the very worst of the Mel- 
anesians. They are cannibals and head hunters al- 
most to a man, ruthless, treacherous, and cruel. 
Long ago, in the days of the Queensland plantation 
trade, they acquired the art of using firearms, and 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 265 

ever since they have kept themselves provided with 
guns and cartridges, the different rulers of the Solo- 
mon group having, apparently, found themselves 
powerless to stop the illegal trading that keeps up 
the supply. In order to pay for their arms, they 
are in the habit of " signing on " to various planta- 
tions within the group only, nowadays, but at the 
time of which I speak, they worked on various other 
islands as well. They make good enough laborers, 
when managed with a strong hand, and judiciously 
distributed among a number of boys from other 
parts of the Pacific; but at times their natural fierce- 
ness and impatience of control blazes out into mu- 
tiny; they kill their employer probably eat him 
into the bargain and run away in any boat that 
they can find. 

About the Hawongas, troubles had been caused 
more than once by parties of runaway Malaita men 
landing on outer, isolated islands, terrorizing and 
sometimes murdering the inhabitants and carrying 
off their goods. I knew, as I have said, that there 
were some large plantation islands not far out of 
sight, and that in all probability they employed Ma- 
laita labor. And I feared, as night came on, and 
darkness, and the terrors of the dark, that a party 
of these formidable man-eaters might have landed 
on the island, and at that moment might be waiting 
for the last hours of the night to make an attack on 
the house. 

More and more, as the afternoon went by, this 
fear gained hold of me, and at last I knew that it 
was no fear, but a certainty. The Malaita men 
could not be quite sure that there was no one in the 
house save myself, but they must be almost sure by 
now sure enough for their purpose. If there 
had been no doubt at all in their minds, they would 



266 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

have come up boldly in full daylight. Having still 
some doubt (probably it seemed strange to them, 
almost incredible, that I should be there alone) 
they would follow their usual plan and attack by 
night. 

There is a curious uniformity about the method of 
attack followed by all Melanesian tribes. Scarcely 
ever do they make a raid in the middle of night. 
They prefer the hour just before dawn, when there 
is a very little light, and when most people are sleep- 
ing soundly, in the cool of the early hours. I knew 
that, if I had calculated rightly, these Malaita men 
would wait till near five o'clock, and then 

Merciful God and then ! . . . 

I was quite sure that, had there been any one with 
me had there been even the remotest chance of 
any one coming to my help I should have been in 
simple hysterics of fright. But there was no one to 
rely on save myself. Others than I have found that 
fact wonderfully steadying in great emergencies. 

" There's only one thing I have that they have 
not," I thought, " and that is the white man's brain. 
It has got to get me out of this, somehow or other." 

Shoeless, noiselessly, I walked up and down the 
rooms of the upper story, thinking as hard as I knew 
how. " I am far, far cleverer than they," I said to 
myself. " I must find a way." But it seemed hard 
to find, and all the time the day was flying past. 

One thing occurred to me I must eat, to keep 
up my nerve and strength. I had scarcely taken 
food for two days. I went down to the kitchen, 
brewed coffee, fried bacon, and forced myself to 
take a hot meal. Then, feeling stronger, I went 
upstairs and began a systematic search for the arms 
that my reason told me were certain to be hidden 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 267 

away somewhere or other. " They " would not be 
without arms of some kind, in such a lonely place. 
There were plenty of daggers, rapiers, swords, hung 
up on the wall, but I did not trouble about those. 
In the island world, a gun or a revolver is the only 
arm that counts. I could use both passably well; 
father had taught me. 

I went through every room ; I hunted upstairs and 
down. I looked on the top of presses and ward- 
robes, under beds. I peeped behind boxes and pic- 
tures, and tapped the brown wood statues in the 
drawing-room, to see if they were hollow. All this 
time, day was flying; the hours were speeding down 
the slope of afternoon to the great gulf of night. 
But my search was fruitless. I could not find the 
arms. 

" If I could find a place to hide," was my des- 
perate thought; "if I could get up under the roof 
somewhere, or under the tanks outside. . . ." 

But there was no opening in the ceiling of the 
rooms, and if I made one if I climbed up and 
broke through with an ax I knew that I should 
leave a guidepost to my hiding place. As for get- 
ting under the tanks, I rejected that idea after a 
moment's thought. Tanks were too obvious; as 
well hide under a bed. . . . 

Under a bed! . . . 

I don't know what it was that struck me, just 
there; what made me stand still and clap my hands 
together, with the feeling of one who has at last 
found his way out of a labyrinth. Perhaps some 
vague memory of things heard or read, long ago, 
came back under the stress of the moment. Per- 
haps, as " Jane Eyre " said: 

" Nature was roused, and did no miracle but her best." 



268 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

At all events, I went straight to the big upstairs 
room, and without hesitation crept underneath that 
immense Dutch bed and looked up. . . . 

I saw, concealed by the thickness of the mattress 
and the great width of the bed, a long, coffin-shaped 
receptacle attached to the bedstead. I struck it. 
It clinked faintly in reply. 

In an instant, I saw what this discovery was des- 
tined to mean for me not only the finding of the 
arms, but the security of my own safety. Surely, 
within that box, so perfectly concealed for you 
might look a hundred times beneath the bed, in the 
ordinary way; you might, as I had done, take off 
the mattress, and hunt underneath it, without sus- 
pecting anything my slender body and small 
weight could find a place! 

With more hope in my heart than I had yet cared 
to entertain, I crouched beneath the bed, seeking for 
the way to open the box. I found that one side 
could be let down, by unfastening certain strong iron 
catches. The box, or rather tray for it had no 
top save the overlying bedstead thus exposed, 
contained six rifles and six shotguns, wrapped in 
flannel, also half a dozen Colt revolvers, of the re- 
liable navy pattern, and a number of cartridge boxes. 
Being wide, it was not nearly full. I saw that I 
could lie comfortably beside the rifles, with room to 
spare; and that, so concealed, there was every chance 
of my escaping observation. 

By now it was getting late, and the sun was al- 
most down. I went round the lower story, closed 
the doors, and saw that the shutters were fastened. 
I had noticed, some days before, that they were not 
wooden, as they seemed to be, but steel, painted to 
resemble wood. When they were closed, and the 
shutters of the upper story fastened also, it would 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 269 

be impossible for any one to enter the house without 
making noise enough to wake the dead. I might 
therefore stay safely on the big bed, and sleep, un- 
less I heard any sound, when I should have to take 
refuge in the arm chest at once. 

I spent the time before dark in padding the rifles 
and revolvers with all the spare clothes I could find, 
so that they would not make the slightest clinking 
noise. I selected a big Colt, and loaded it. I must 
confess I had but small idea of using it on any na- 
tive. My thought was that if the worst came to the 
worst, I should find, in one of those blunt-nosed car- 
tridges, the only possible salvation for myself. . . . 

" If I have to," I said, sitting on the edge of the 
Dutch bed, the big .45 drooping from my slight hand, 
" I must remember how they do it in novels. He 
always ' puts the muzzle of the revolver to his tem- 
ple, and presses the trigger ' ' . . . With the re- 
volver carefully uncocked, I laid the muzzle against 
the side of my forehead. Its hard, cold circle felt 
like the finger of Death himself. I snatched it 
away, and began to cry. 

" All this oughtn't to have happened," I sobbed. 
" It's horrible. There ought to be some one here to 
take care of me. Oh, Harry, Harry, if you only 
knew! How can you be alive, and not know! If 
Luke knew, what would he think! There's no one. 
Oh, father, what would you think, if you had lived 
you always wanted me to be taken care of! " 

I sat, a miserable little heap, in the center of the 
bed, having my cry out. Then I took up the re- 
volver, and cried a little over that it looked so 
hard and cruel and cocked it, and put it carefully 
down. And now, it being dark, I began to wander 
helplessly, restlessly, up and down the house, for 
once not afraid of the night, but only of that which 



270 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

it might bring. The greater fear had driven out 
the less. 

I don't know how I passed the early part of the 
night. It seemed at least a week long. Once or 
twice I was so tired with my wandering about, my 
staring into the dark through the louvers of the 
steel shutters, my strained, fruitless listening, that I 
dropped into whatever chair came nearest, and slept, 
until I was startled up afresh by anything noth- 
ing an owl hoo-hooing in the forest, a frog croak- 
ing on the top of the tank to wander, and listen 
again. It seemed to me that in those wanderings I 
realized as fully as any mortal may the feelings of 
spirits supposed to haunt old houses, restlessly, night 
by night, forever. I felt that I was haunting. I 
felt it would never end. 

But it did. 

I had no watch or clock; it was impossible to tell 
how the night hours were going. But I judge, by 
later events, that it must have been nearing dawn 
when, as I lay half asleep and half awake in one of 
the long chairs of " Lily's " room, I was flung upon 
my feet as if by an electric shock. Some one, with- 
out the least attempt at concealment, was trying the 
doors below. 

Trying! It was more than that! He, or they, 
after a tentative push or two, seemed to have fixed 
on a door; and in another instant an awful din be- 
gan; the sound of fierce, determined men smashing 
their way in by the oldest of all devices a batter- 
ing-ram. It must have been a tree trunk that they 
had, and no small one, by the noise. And may God 
deliver me from ever hearing again such sounds as 
the yell that accompanied every stroke ! 

Not many people have heard the island cannibal 
raising his war cry, and of those who have, few have 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 271 

returned to tell the tale; for the Papuan and the 
Melanesian, rank cowards at heart, never attack un- 
less all the odds are on their side. 

The horror of the cry lies in the fact that it sounds 
hardly human. It is somewhat like the howl of a 
wolf, somewhat like the yelping of angry dogs. 
"Wooh! Wooh! Woohl Wooh! Woo-ool" 
yapped the savages below, as they ran at the door, 
and slammed the tree trunk home. 

That sound in itself was enough to tell, if one had 
not known already, that one might as well look for 
mercy from the jaws of a pack of wolves, as at the 
hands of these creatures, miscalled men. 

Back to my mind, as I fled to the big room, and 
crawled, panting and shaking, into my hiding place, 
came the recollection of a body of Malaita men I 
had once seen marching through Port Hervey, on 
their way to the boat that was to fetch them home. 
Beside the gentle, soft-eyed Hawongan men and 
women, they had looked like a pack of devils out on 
holiday from hell so dark as to be almost black; 
broad-chested, heavy-muscled, their naked bodies 
flung back from the waist with an inimitable savage 
swagger, their fierce eyes roving boldly, and meet- 
ing the eye of the white man with an angry stare. 
I recalled their blubber lips and flattened noses, 
hung, like the snouts of pigs, with heavy rings ; their 
woolly heads stuck full of feathers; the great bundle 
of clubs and spears carried for them since they 
were not allowed to wear weapons in Hawonga 
by a frightened native policeman. Seeing them 
pass, I had felt as one feels at the sight of danger- 
ous animals led by under control. . . . And I was 
alone on an island with them, and they were loose ! 

In my hiding place, I lay still as death, scarcely 
daring to breathe, for the horrible noise had ceased, 



272 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

the door being down, and the silence that succeeded 
was still more terrifying. The Malaita men, I 
knew, were spreading themselves over the house, 
looking for its inhabitants, and hoping, by their own 
stillness, to make their victims betray themselves 
through some movement, some attempt to es- 
cape. . . . 

" I'm not eighteen yet, and I'm going to die," 
was my thought; for I could not feel sure that the 
men would not discover my hiding place. " I wish 
I could have lived longer. I wish I had been a bet- 
ter girl. I wish I hadn't told lies to Lorraine 
and put red on my lips when I went out and stolen 
the cake from Dinah that time when I was little 
and I wish I hadn't gone to sleep instead of going to 
church, ever so many Sundays and made up funny 
stories with Mabelle about people in the Bible and 
run up bills at the Japanese store. . . ." The 
whole catalogue of my childish sins ran through my 
mind, as I lay there in the awful silence, knowing 
that, in another ten minutes or less, I might have to 
put that cold steel ring to my temple and let loose 
clean, decent death upon myself for fear of 
worse. . . . 

I tried to put up some kind of a prayer, but I 
could find none, save " God be good to Harry Eng- 
land, and let us be together in heaven." For I 
could not fancy my little soul let loose alone in any 
world beyond the world, without his soul to travel 
hand in hand with it. 

And then hell broke loose. 

The Malaita men, satisfied, I do not know how, 
that there was no man in the house, began to run 
from room to room, howling their terrible howl, 
lighting lamps and candles and everything of the 
sort they could find, seizing on plunder of one sort 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 273 

and another, as I judged by the cries of satisfaction 
that broke out from time to time, and hunting 
hunting all the time, determinedly, for me. 

They had been years on some plantation, in all 
probability, and had learned pigeon-English while 
there. Some of it broke forth every now and then 
in the midst of their own language. " Mary " is 
the pigeon-English word for " woman " and it came 
often enough to make my blood crawl in my veins, 
and my hair crisp on my head. 

" Where this fellow Mary him stop? " " Hooh 
hooh hoo-oo I " " Me catchum Mary." 

" No, you , , you no catche Mary, him 

go walk-about." " Me go walk-about, me findem." 
And another howl. 

They divided themselves shortly, some remaining 
in the house, and some going to hunt the kitchen and 
outhouses. The tanks were among the first places 
they went to; I heard them, with horror, poking 
spears underneath, and even climbing up on the 
tops to lever off the manhole covers, and stab down 
into the water inside. If I could have turned colder 
than I was already, I should have done so then ; for 
I knew by their actions that it was not the first time 
these men had hunted helpless white people from de- 
fense to defense, through hiding place after hiding 
place, in the dead of night. What poor shrieking 
soul had they sent to its account, from a body 
dragged out of the water tank in which it had 
thought itself so safe? . . . 

But the hiding place of the rifles, and of me, de- 
feated them. 

That was not surprising, after all; it would have 
defeated most white men. You could easily look 
below the bed, as they did ; pull off the mattress, and 
stare at the springs and webbing underneath, with- 



274 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

out a suspicion that below that mass of springs, see- 
ing, but not seen, there lay, beside the store of rifles 
and revolvers that were worth their weight in gold, 
a terrified, trembling girl. 

When I saw their dark faces, with the rolling 
black and white eyes, and the stained, grinning teeth, 
actually bending over me, I turned so sick that I 
was afraid a sudden attack of nausea might betray 
me and settle the matter once and for all. But I 
bit my under lip right through, and the running 
blood cured me. It was, after all, but a very few 
moments before they removed the big lamp they 
were holding over the bed and turned away. And 
in the relief, I came nearer to fainting than I had 
done that night. 

I heard them, then, thumping and padding down 
the stairs, quarreling, it seemed, over the distribu- 
tion of their booty, and snarling at one another be- 
cause nobody had found myself. Afterwards, there 
was a silence, which lasted so long that exhausted 
Nature had her way and I fell asleep. 

I awoke to full sunlight and the sound of voices 
on the terrace below. I thought I must be delirious, 
for the voices seemed to me it was impossible, 
surely ! like those of Luke Ivory and of Dinah. 

My legs were so stiff with the long imprisonment 
that I had some trouble getting out. But I man- 
aged it, and hurrying to one of the windows saw, 
through the shutters, with incredulous amazement, 
Dinah and Luke indeed. 

If it was not their ghosts, they were there, stand- 
ing on the concrete terrace that surrounded the 
lower story, examining the smashed door, and talk- 
ing to one another. There was not a sign of the 
Malaita men. 

I suppose any girl who reads this will believe that 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 275 

I ran to the mirror in Lily's room, and made a 
hasty readjustment of myself, before I went down- 
stairs to greet my rescuers; I daresay older people 
will not. But that is what I did do. A hair brush, 
a wet towel hastily used, and a sash retied and a 
pair of shoes slipped on, made some difference in 
my wild aspect, and did not take two minutes in 
the doing. Then I ran down to the veranda, and 
straight into Dinah's arms. 

" Come inside, come inside 1 " I exclaimed, while 
she was kissing and crying over me for it had 
suddenly occurred to me that the Malaita men might 
be still somewhere about. " It isn't safe here." 

"Safe? Why not?" demanded Dinah. "I 
never see a pleasanter amalgamated house." 

" Come inside," I reiterated, dragging at her 
hand. " There are Malaita men on the island, and 
they came here last night to kill me, and hunted all 
over the house, and you don't know but what 
they" 

"What's that? " said Luke sharply, entering the 
house with Dinah and myself. I think he had had 
some very different speech upon his lips, when he saw 
me ; but he realized instantly, as Dinah did not, that 
I was not in any way crazed by solitude, and was 
speaking the simple truth. 

I told him briefly what had happened. We 
stood in the sandalwood drawing-room, beneath the 
smiling, bending figure of the Cnidian Venus, the 
majestic ruffian of the Vatican looking at us from 
his seat at the other side of the room. It was dim 
and cool, and full of the scent of precious woods; 
the light slanted in through the barred louvers, save 
where it fell in one unbroken, burning patch through 
the wrecked doorway. 

" What did you come in? " I asked. " Have you 



276 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

any men? Are they armed? You don't know but 
the Malaita men may " 

" We came in the only thing available, a launch," 
said Luke. " When we heard but there isn't 
time to explain. I've no one, I ran the launch my- 
self. Where are those rifles and things? Show me 
as quickly as you can." 

I ran upstairs before him, and disclosed the hid- 
ing place under the bed. Luke swept a quick glance 
round the room, as he pulled out an armful of guns 
and cartridges. I think he would have liked to look 
about him, and take note of things, had there not 
been sterner business afoot. As it was, I saw a 
shadow of curiosity disapproval I don't know 
what pass over his face. Then he turned to the 
door. 

" I must go down to the launch at once," he said. 
" If those fellows get hold of it " 

He stopped, in the very act of quickly loading a 
rifle. A yell of triumph had arisen from the beach, 
" Hooh-hooh hooh hoo-oo I " 

"Lord help us!" cried Dinah. "The neegurs 
has got the launch." 

Luke's face did not change color, but I saw his 
mouth set tight and a strange shine, that I did not 
know, come into his eyes. 

" We're trapped," he said. " They have got the 
launch. They must have been in hiding at the 
beach." 

" Sir," besought Dinah, " don't you go to try and 
get it; you'd do no good, and what's to become of 
miss if they kill you? " 

I do not think Luke had had any intention of go- 
ing forth on that forlorn hope; he was too quick a 
thinker not to have seen that, under the circum- 
stances, his place was with Dinah and myself. He 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 277 

put down the rifle, with a sharp breath that was al- 
most a sigh. 

" The first thing," he said, " is to patch up this 
door." 

I ran to fetch tools from the carpenter's chest in 
the kitchen, and brought them to him. 

" Thanks, Dara," he said, looking at me almost 
for the first time. " This isn't an impossible job. 
Cheer up, we shall be able to keep them off for to- 
night, anyhow." And he began to hammer and se- 
cure. I watched him, anticipating every need that 
he might have; between us, we got the door made 
safe in a very little while. 

" If they come at that again," he said, " we shall 
be able to pick them off nicely from inside. It'll 
be all right." But I saw he spoke more confidently 
than he felt. 

The door being secured, Luke, warning us to 
keep a lookout while we talked, set his face to one of 
the shuttered windows, and watching through the 
louvers, spoke to me. 

" In Heaven's name, Dara," (I had known it 
was coming) , " what induced you to do such an awful 
thing as you did? Had you no conscience, if you 
hadn't any thought of " 

" How did you hear where I was? " I broke in. 
" I've been expecting some one to come for ever so 
long." 

" I don't see why you should," said Luke, " when 
there was absolutely no means of finding out 
where you were. We all thought you were dead, 
for nearly a week. The last thing seen of you 
was " 

I interrupted again. I would not have that 
subject. 

"What happened at the church? I was so 



278 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

afraid, Luke. I thought Harry would have killed 
you." 

" It was not his fault if he did not," answered 
Luke dryly. " I have two broken ribs at this min- 
ute " (I had noticed that he was moving with a curi- 
ous stiffness) , " and I was knocked out of time for 
nearly half an hour by another blow. He's a hard 
hitter." There was a note of something like ad- 
miration in his voice the first I had ever heard, 
where Harry England was concerned. I marveled 
over the curious ways of men. 

" Not but what I could have held him for a bit," 
he went on, somewhat eagerly, " only under such cir- 
cumstances as that, nobody had fair play. They 
stopped us at once. But Dara I can't help it 
how could you, could you stand up there before 
the altar to marry him, when all the time " 

" I told you," I broke in, " it was that letter." 

" The letter England forged," said Luke coldly. 

"He did not!" I cried. 

Luke went on, without minding me : 

" You should have known the first marriage was 
legal. And if you didn't, he certainly did. He 
may have cared for you " 

" He did. He does!" 

" In any case, it was your fortune he was after 
principally. I believe he planned it out when you 
were only a child. Dinah told me " Dinah, with 
thoughtful delicacy, had moved out of hearing 
" that he came into the kitchen once, and heard her 
say that you had a half share of the island inde- 
pendently of me. And I know I've proof 
that he visited the island when I was away, and took 
specimens of crystals down to Sydney to get them 
analyzed." 

" I don't know what you are talking about," I 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 279 

said. " Harry England had plenty of his own; he 
doesn't want the half of a silly little plantation like 
Hiliwa Dara. We all made too much of it." 

"Plantation? But I forgot. I didn't tell you. 
Why, Dara, the place is a mine a mine of the 
most valuable kind of crystal in the world Ice- 
land spar, that they use for optical instruments. 
There was only one place in the world where it 
could be got, a farm on the shores of Iceland, where 
there's a cave not a big cave and all the world 
had been working that cave for over two hundred 
years. I can even tell you the name of the farm; 
it's Helgustadir. Well, the price of Iceland spar 
has been climbing for ages and I happened to be 
doing crystallography at the School of Mines, and 
I came across things that told me there were 
heart-shaped crystals and but you wouldn't un- 
derstand. Anyhow, the fact is that Hiliwa Dara is 
a fortune, and a big fortune too. I suspect England 
knew it long before I did; he's very deeply read. 
That's his affection for you that, and an attempt 
to make you his " 

"Luke!" 

" You see, the word isn't even repeatable. . . . 
He meant to do that so that I should have to 
give you up. That's Harry England." 

I was on the near verge of tears, but I managed to 
soeak 

"That's not Harry England," I said. "You 
hate him, you don't know him. As for the things 
you say, they aren't true." 

" You maintain that, in the face of what every 
one knows? " 

" I can't argue. I'm not clever like Lorraine and 
you. Only I'm sure, sure, sure, there's another side 
you have not heard! " 



280 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

" Why do you say ' Lorraine and me ' ? " asked 
Luke for all reply. 

" Because," I answered him for I was now 
fairly heated " Lorraine and you have been in 
love with one another ever since the night of the 
dance." 

Luke, always mindful of the work in hand, sent 
a quick glance down the avenue, into the empty clear- 
ing, before he turned to face me, and to reply: 

" I've not given you, or any one, the right to say 
that. Nor has Lorraine." 

" Can you say it isn't true? " I persisted. 

" It doesn't matter in the least whether it is or 
not." 

" Doesn't matter! " 

" No." He looked at me, with that curious 
young St. George expression of his one would 
have sworn that the sandalwood drawing-room was 
full of dragons and devils, and that he was vowed 
to destroy them. " You know," he said, " I don't 
put the enormous stress on those things that you 
and . . . that you do." 

" Those things! Why, they are life! " 

" Only a part of it. If they were life if they 
were even the biggest things in it then, I grant 
you, marriage wouldn't stand for very much. One 
could clear out of it the minute one didn't like any- 
thing in it. Nothing would stand everything 
would go down. Would you like that? " 

" Of course not. But what has it to do with 
Lorraine? " 

" Well this. Suppose I grant for the sake of 
argument that I have fallen in love with her " 

" And she with you," I persisted. 

He went on as if he had not heard me: 

" Suppose I broke our marriage " 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 281 

" I don't call it that." 

" Suppose I married her always supposing, too, 
that she would have me, which would be Well ! 
If I did. There's nearly fifteen years between us. 
I don't think I should worry about that. But it 
would mean, to a dead certainty, that she'd start 
breaking her heart about her age, in a very few 
years. It always does. It's misery. So, in any 
case, I shouldn't that is, I hope I'd have 
strength of mind enough not to make hay of her 
life like that. Now, that's just a supposititious 
case " 

I made an unbelieving face. 

" But I've mentioned it, to show you how I think. 
. . . Dara, I believe there'll be no attack from those 
men for the present. It isn't their way to advance 
in open daylight on a sort of fortress. ... I wish 
we had had a quieter occasion to talk things out, 
but " 

" I don't think I need any quieter occasion. 
What is there to say? " 

" Only one thing and I don't want you to an- 
swer hastily. I mean to hold to that marriage. I 
would rather see you dead than given over to " 

" Did it never occur to you," I asked him, " that 
that's pretty much all plain, common jealousy? " 

" It didn't or if it did, I know how much to al- 
low for jealousy, which perhaps can't be left out al- 
together. It's not a great deal, anyhow. But you 
won't let me speak. What I wanted to say is this 
You were left as a trust to me ; your father and my 
great-grandfather sealed that in the most solemn 
way that was possible. I take it so still. Every- 
thing that's happened lately proves how much it's 
needed. Well, I propose to go to Hiliwa Dara, go 
on managing the estate and the mine, and wait there 
for you, let's say three months or so. You and 



282 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

Lorraine and Dinah can go south for a change; take 
a trip to Sydney, and see the world; it will help you 
to get your values right again. The old people 
weren't mistaken when they thought that you and I 
would pull well together. Only for Dara, if 
you'd never met that man if he hadn't you 
would have liked me; you did like me, didn't 
you?" 

" Oh, yes, I liked you, and I do like you, if you 
think that matters," I answered listlessly. " It 
seems funny that I should, after everything but 
then, you're what people call such a decent sort, 
Luke." 

'Well, then?" 

" Well, then ! I shall always like you, and I 
shall go and live somewhere or other I don't care 
where and I sha'n't ever marry any one at all, 
since you won't set me free to marry the man I 
love not like." 

" You will think differently by and by," said Luke, 
laughing for the first time his light, boyish laugh 
again. It made me realize how young he really 
was, in spite of his curiously mature way of thinking 
and speaking. " You were made for love and care, 
Dara, not to stand alone. You'll never do it." 

We had quite forgotten Dinah, but she was far 
from having forgotten us. She came forward now, 
a large handkerchief in her hand, large glassy tears 
trickling down her calm, unruffled face. 

" Miss Dara," she said, " I'm that glad to see 
you again, not dead drownded, that I could cry " 
(overlooking the fact that she was doing so). 
" And I never knew a thing about nothing, along 
of that heathen cat Maiera." 

I gave a scream. I had realized all in an instant 
what I and Nurse Elsie and Lorraine should have 
guessed long ago. 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 283 

" Yes," said Dinah, swabbing her eyes (she had a 
mighty relish for a " scene "). " She poisoned me 
with her wicked drugs to keep me sick so I wouldn't 
know there was anything being done superstitiously 
behind my back. If the kitchen girl hadn't stole 
and ate the limes, and got sick same as me, we'd 
never have known. I never did like them Eureka 
people, as they call them, half black and half white. 
If your old Dinah had of been up and about, dear 
Miss Dara, you and Mr. Luke would never of been 
in this trouble to-day, and you lost on a deserted 
island, and your good clothes ruined, and me finding 
you here dressed up in all that ribaldry! " She 
cast a disapproving look at my kimono and sashes, 
and went on: " Dear Miss Dara, don't you think 
anything more about anything at all, but just come 
away with me, as Mr. Luke says, and no one won't 
bother you about no sort of alimony." 

" Matrimony," said Luke, wincing at the word; 
it was seldom that Dinah's innocent mistakes hit 
any one quite so hard. " Dinah's in the right, but 
it'll be time enough to bother about all these things 
when we've got out of the trouble we're in at present. 
We'd better not forget that. After all, I shall have 
the rest of my life to set things right in." 

" And may it be a longitudinal one, sir," said 
Dinah piously. 

" Well, now," said Luke, " about these natives. 
Set your mind at rest, Dara; the worst's behind you, 
and I don't think there's any serious cause for you 
to worry now. Poor kid, what a time you must 
have had last night! " His voice thickened a little; 
he went on hurriedly: "There'll be another launch 
along about to-morrow morning. We could get 
nothing but a small one in Port Hervey when the 
news came through the natives I'll tell you 



284 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

again and I didn't choose to take a sailing vessel, 
because the wind's gone round to the east again, and 
likely to stop. So I got off in this thing; I knew the 
engine well anyhow; and I arranged to have the 
company's big boat sent down as soon as ever she 
came in, which will be to-night. She ought to be 
here in the morning. We have only the night to 
get through." 

He spoke cheerfully, but I knew very well that 
the situation was not so bright as he made out. 
There were three of us, well armed, it was true; 
but the Malaita men had arms also, though their 
guns were none of the best and doubtless they 
were determined to leave no witnesses of their raid 
behind them. As for the launch, that was neither 
here nor there ; they would not go away in her, even 
though they had seized her, since none of them 
would know how to handle the engine. 

" I wish the company's boat was coming down 
to-day," I sighed, looking out at the empty sea. 

" If I'd had the least idea in the world but who 
would have? We must make the best of things 
as they are. It's time the High Commissioner 
stopped the recruiting of Malaita men altogether; 
they are nothing but a curse, and no one would have 
them if our natives weren't too dashed lazy to do 
anything." He was looking over the rifles as he 
spoke, and handling them approvingly. 

" Good stuff this," he said. " I must allow he 
knows " 

" Oh, by the way," I interrupted for I had 
remembered something else " you might tell me 
how on earth it was that you chanced to come back 
so soon that time." 

" I didn't chance," said Luke, examining the 
rifling of a barrel. " Dinah sent for me." 

"Dinah. How could she?" 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 285 

" I don't know. She did. She went to the post 
office " 

" Oh, I remember but we thought " 

" And she gave the postmaster a telegram. He 
thought she wasn't in her senses, because there's no 
wireless, but he humored her by taking it. And, by 
Jove, the cable ship called in for just one night, and 
spoke a gunboat that was surveying about Hiliwa 
Dara. And I got it." He looked round; Dinah 
was not attending; she was examining, with extreme 
disapproval, the Cnidian Venus. " It was a funny 
wire," he went on. " She dictated it to the post- 
master ' Mr. Luke please come back at once she 
is going to marry him.' However, it did the job." 

" It did," I said, turning to look out of the win- 
dow, so that he should not see the tears in my eyes. 
What could one girl do against a world arrayed in 
opposition? I think, in that moment, I gave up 
hope. 

Luke took command of the house and the situ- 
ation. One of us, he said, was to keep watch from 
the front (the back of the house gave on a long 
stretch of open ground, which they would hardly 
tackle). For the present Dinah could begin. He 
wanted to have a look at the house. 

" I'll look out as long as you like; there's not 
much to be gained looking in," stated Dinah. " I 
never seen anything so entirely obsequious as that 
one," she jerked a contemptuous thumb at the 
Venus. 

All this time one thought, one question, had been 
burning in my mind, and I could keep it in no longer. 
Luke, seemingly anxious to go over the house, was 
making for the back room, the one with the black 
and white furniture and strange pictures. I fol- 
lowed him. 

He paused on the threshold, looking about him 



286 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

critically. I saw the wild, disturbing picture of the 
frozen ghosts catch his eye. 

"That's good very good," he said. "But 
morbid." 

" Luke," I burst out, " where is Harry 
England?" 

He did not turn round. 

" I should have thought," he said, after an inter- 
val, " that you could answer that question better 
than any one else. I have been wanting to ask 
you." 

"Me! Why?" 

" Because you told I suppose you told the 
natives to bring you here." 

" No, they brought me themselves. What do 
you mean? " 

" Do you mean to say," asked Luke, suddenly 
swinging round, " that you don't know where you 
are?" 

"How should I?" 

" Will you tell me you didn't know this was 
Rorona Harry England's place? " 

" No! " I screamed, in an accent that must have 
carried conviction with it. " Rorona ! Never. I 
didn't know it was anything just a bare rock 
Oh, that was his surprise ! " The tears came 
again I could not keep them back, though I would 
willingly have done so, under those unsympathizing 
eyes. His surprise for me ! This lovely home ! 
Why, " Lily's " room was mine ! The sweets I had 
eaten, the clothes I was wearing, had been bought 
for me. The house I should have known it ! 
Everything in it bore the impress of his strange, 
original character, with the curious hint of austerity 
that gave it its special flavor. The road that led 
to nowhere why, that must be the track he used 
for his running practice. I knew he always had 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 287 

owned a part of the island; the house and most of 
its furnishing dated before the war; but the room 
that was to be my boudoir that was, no doubt, 
fitted up by the help of Hawongan and Tahitian 
stores within the last week or two. 

My room my room and I had seen them 
thus. 

"Don't cry you break one up," said Luke's 
voice, somewhat unsteadily. " Dara girlie 
don't." He came close to me, but did not touch 
me. I think he knew I would not have endured it 
then. " Your nerves are all upset, and no wonder. 
Have a rest." He led me back into the drawing- 
room to one of the couches. 

" Oh, you men," I said. " You always think a 
girl's all right if you can only get her to ' lie down.' ' 
But I dropped on to the couch and lay there, looking 
across the room at the inescapable Venus. I knew 
now why, subconsciously, I had hated her so. Some- 
thing not myself had told me that she was Harry's 
admiration a feminine thing he had loved before 
he loved me. No wonder I had wanted to throw 
her from her pedestal. 

The rest of Luke's explorations were undertaken 
alone, and he made no comment about anything he 
saw. Dinah got us some lunch while he kept a look- 
out. Talk languished later on in the day. We all 
felt the strain of the situation. Yet it was strange 
to me to note how differently I felt the waning of 
this day. Magically the terrors of darkness had 
vanished; I watched the sinking sun and had no fear. 

I suppose it' was four o'clock, or a little after, 
when Luke gave a sudden exclamation. 

" The Lizard." 

"What? Where ?" I asked him. I saw that he 
was staring out to sea, and that his hands, holding 
the bar of the shutters, were clenched tight. 



288 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

He seemed hardly to hear me. He sprang back 
from the window and began looking round the 
room. 

"Are there any flags in the house?" he asked 
quickly. " Can one fix things to the roof? " 

;' What is it? "I demanded. 

" The gunboat that called at Hiliwa Dara. If 
we can attract her attention We must. Aren't 
there " 

' Why, there's the flagstaff," I broke in. 

" A flagstaff, and you never used it! " 

" I hadn't any flags. I don't know where they 
are." 

" We can settle that. Where oh, that's it." 
He had seen the tall mast standing, not in front of 
the house, but away to one side, where it could be 
viewed from all points of the compass. " We have 
simply got to stop her," he said. His eyes were 
bright with excitement, his mouth had shut itself into 
one straight line. I began to understand just how 
much he had been fearing, up to this, for Dinah and 
for me I do not think any question of his own 
safety had entered his mind. 

" If you can't find flags," he said, " we can run up 
a tablecloth. Why, there is a locker on the mast! " 

There was, but it had never occurred to me to 
break it open. Luke, an ax in his hand, was out 
immediately, running through the yellow afternoon 
sunlight towards the signal mast. 

"Oh, be careful!" I cried. 

" Dearie, Miss Dara, he can't be," said Dinah. 
" There isn't no way to be. Maybe them devils 
won't see him." 

Not see him! We knew better, she and I. So 
did Luke know better. I saw he was putting the 
mast between himself and that fatal strip of 
forest. 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 289 

A shot sounded. Dinah and I cried out as if it 
had struck us. 

" Come back! " I screamed. 

"I'm not hit!" called Luke, hacking at the 
locker. He had it open now; was pulling out a jack. 
" Dinah," he called as he worked, " I must hail the 
boat, but don't let Dara come out, and don't you, 
no matter what " 

On the sound of another shot he stopped, and I 
could see him stumble, like a beaten horse. Then 
he pulled himself together again. His white coat 
was red as he fastened the flag to the halyards and 
began to pull. 

Dinah, white but determined, stood beside me in 
the shelter of the louvered shutters, and kept her arm 
tight round my waist. 

" Let me go," I cried. 

' No, Miss Dara," she answered, though she was 
sobbing. ; ' I won't have my Mr. Luke give his 
life for nothing. He said ' stay,' and I'll keep 
you." 

" His life what do you mean ? He isn't let 
me go ! " 

She held fast. She pointed silently to the foot of 
the signal post. Luke had fallen. His head lay 
back, upturned to the sunny sky, beneath the flag 
that now streamed out against the blue, half-masted, 
upside down. 

I have little more to tell. 

The Lizard saw the signal trust a man-of-war 
not to miss a flag calling out distress across five 
leagues of sea. She was into the roadstead within 
fifteen minutes; in five more a party of bluejackets, 
at the double, were coming out of the pathway where 
the bougainvillaea grew. They seemed to grasp the 
situation instantly. One of them called to Dinah 



290 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

and myself, who had run to the doorway, to stay 
within. Two lifted and brought into the house all 
that remained of my lover, he who bore the name of 
my husband. He had kept his trust, indeed. . . . 

They chased the Malaita men round the island, 
and captured every one. The savages did not even 
make a show of fight, brave though they were when 
hunting terrified women, or when firing from safe 
cover at a single man. Ironed, they were put in the 
ship's jail, to wait their trial in Hawonga. 

By dawn next day Dinah and I were back at Port 
Hervey, in the little cottage where the bougainvillaeas 
grew. And that afternoon a fleet of launches, 
boats, and canoes left the jetty for a certain low 
green island far out in the lagoon, where there are 
many white crosses, and a few tall stones, and where 
the weeping ironwood, Oceania's graveyard tree, 
sobs all day in the flowing Pacific wind. And before 
the boats went one boat in black. 

So rest, noble heart, who deserved a better love 
than that you asked of me. 

They told me that the Queen of the Islands was 
away. No harm had come to England. No one 
could have proved that he knew he was leading to 
the altar a girl already married; no one, for the 
sake of the dead, wished to bring against him the 
charge of assault that could very well have been 
sustained. They said, in the islands, that " Harry 
always escaped. . . ." He had certainly done so 
this time. 

When I met him again I was near six months 
older, and it was in Sydney, where Dinah and I were 
staying. I had had a nervous breakdown no 
matter for surprise after all that had happened 
and the doctors had ordered me south for a change. 
So I made the acquaintance of the siren city of the 



MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 291 

Pacific, Sydney, whom to know is to love forever. 
She healed my sorrows and restored my youth as 
nothing else would have done. 

Dinah and I were down at the Heads, far from 
the city, one clear morning of autumn the gentle 
autumn of Australasia, that speaks in nothing of 
death or of regret, whose suns are gold, whose seas 
lie purple to the tempered light of noon, and whose 
winds come laden with the soft coolness that is life. 

She had taken her knitting, and was sitting some 
way off, working alone. I, on the edge of the 
cliffs, was looking out to sea to the " open sea," 
my country and thinking, as I thought always, of 
my man who loved the sea. However long he 
might be in coming, I knew that he would come. . . . 

And when I looked round, with eyes dazzled by 
the light on the far waters, I saw his face. 

" I'm not a dream," was what he said. I suppose 
I must have looked as though I saw a vision, or a 
ghost. . . . 

Do you care to hear all that I heard? How 
Maiera, in love with my young lover, and Lalua, 
following out her promise to give me to Harry 
England, if he would swear never to kill Luke Ivory, 
had between them forged, poisoned, and carried 
through their designs at a cost that angered England 
deeply, when he knew it ready though he had 
been for any ordinary stratagem that might bring 
him what he wanted. 

How England had planned to carry me away, 
indeed, by means of a marriage not doubtfully 
illegal, because it was the only means of separating 
me from Luke but how he had meant to give 
me, in Rorona, the place of an honored sister only 
until Luke should set me free. . . . 

" And if you doubted that, my girl," he said, " I 
thought the room I made for you would prove it." 



292 MY SOUTH SEA SWEETHEART 

" Lily's room? " I asked him. 
"Yes," he answered. "Just that Lily's 
room." 



"You don't ask anything?" he said later on, 
" about that precious crystal mine of yours. And 
yet, you know, I shall own it next week." 

" I don't need to," I answered him. " A girl 
knows whether a man wants her or her money." 

" It was your money, once," he said coolly. 
" Ivory was right, in some things. I did plan the 
whole thing out when you were a child. You have 
got to know that." 

" I understand," was all I said. I had pictured 
explanations protestations I don't know what. 
They were never wanted. 

Of what the money did I have no space to tell; 
another volume would scarce hold that story. " I 
shall make you a Queen indeed," he said to me, 
" my Queen of the Islands. . . ." They call us 
the President and his wife in the South American 
Republic that has been making so much history 
of late but there will be no other King in 
Estacada so long as Harry England is alive 
Harry, descendant of Prince Hal, who hunted the 
red deer afoot in England, long ago. 

Lorraine has left the world; an Australian Sister- 
hood is her home. She was one not made for 
fortune in her love. 

Dinah is the luck of the biggest undertaker in 
Sydney, whom she married last year. 

And I? I have had my wish. I did not ask for 
happiness as well. Whether Fate has added that 
gift to my life or not is for no one but myself to 
know. 

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